How To Draw A Face In Profile

Hello, my name is Paul Reiken. I teach at the Insight School of Art in North London, and I am going to show you some drawing exercises that you might like to try. I am going to show you how to draw a portrait in profile, so a portrait as seen from the side.

The first thing we need to do is make sure we are plotting out the positioning of things down the face in the right place, so if we take the top of the head, here, and we take the chin right about here, then the eyes need to be about halfway, and from down there, we're going to then take just below a third of the tip of the nose and the mouth which would be closer to the tip of the nose than to the chin, and we're just going to put those construction lines in. The next thing is we're going to try and get this shape absolutely right here. So, I am going to take a line that comes down and then in towards the eye, out towards the end of the nose, around, in.

I am just looking at that silhouette shape and trying to record that very carefully. Around the bottom lip, and then around the chin like that. And the hairline fits in there.

The next thing I need to do, I need to look at the relationship of different parts of the face to each other. So firstly, we've got a space from the bridge of the nose to the front of the eye, so I need to make sure I leave that space there. We don't want to have the eye on the end of the nose, and so, drawing exactly what I can see not what I think I see.

I can see a triangle in there, that goes like that and a dark area there. I can then see a small gap toward the bottom of the eyebrow which is dark in that area, so I am going to use a dark line. I'll use a paler line just over here where it's a bit lighter.

I've then got a line that suggests a nostril. Once again, I am drawing what I can really see, not what I know. So, all I can see is a dark line.

And then I can see a paler line that comes from that nostril, and it goes round very faintly like that and then there's a paler line for the cheek that comes down like that. I can then see from the end of the cheek to the end of the mouth that there's a little gap, so I am going to leave a little gap. Once again, drawing what I really see.

I see a line going slightly up to underneath the top lip and I just use a very faint line to suggest the bottom lip and a very faint line to suggest the top lip. The hairline can then come in looking at spaces again. So, I come down to here on the hairs above the eyes before it comes out, down, round to here.

The ear is something that we often put in the wrong place. So make sure you leave plenty of space between the ear and the eye. So,the top of the ear is in line with the eye, so the top of the ear is here, the bottom of the ear is in line with just above the top lip which is here.

And then I can draw that in just about like that. Little bit of detail, the line that comes around like that. There's a line that wiggles like that, and there's a line in there, there like that and then there's the hair that zigzags behind that.

Just use a wiggly line around the outside and then it comes in, back of the neck. The neck starts coming down passed the line of the eye, there's the eye. Neck starts coming down here, and then we've got the t-shirt that comes around there.

And that's how to plot out a drawing in profile using line.