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Proportions of the human face

There are some simple rules and guides for drawing faces that will help to get proportions correct.

When drawing a portrait of a person facing forward, these guides can help to make the work accurate:

• from the top of the head, the eyes are halfway down
• the eyes fit across the face five times. Divide the width of the face by five to work out how wide the eyes should be
• the bottom of the nose is halfway between the eyebrow and the chin
• the edges of the nose line up with the inner edges of the eyes
• the edges of the mouth line up with the inner edges of the irises
• the top of the ears line up with the top of the eyes

Click through the slideshow to see some examples of student portraits:

Capturing character

There are a number of ways to capture the character of the sitter:

• try out different expressions
• experiment with poses
• use a range of lighting (eg spot, natural, coloured)
• try different backgrounds