How to Draw a Face Step by Step
Everyone draws the eyes too high. It is the most common mistake in beginner portraits, and it comes from one wrong assumption — that the eyes sit near the top of the head. They sit halfway down.
The proportions worth memorising
- Eyes: halfway between the top of the skull and the chin. Measure it on a photo if you do not believe it.
- One eye’s width between the eyes.
- The bottom of the nose sits roughly halfway between the eye line and the chin.
- The mouth roughly a third of the way from the nose to the chin.
- Ears span from the eye line to the bottom of the nose.
- The hairline is not the top of the head. Leave room for the skull above it.
The order to draw in
- Skull circle, then the jaw down to the chin.
- Centre line and eye line, lightly.
- Both eyes together, alternating between them.
- Nose, then mouth.
- Ears, aligned to the guides.
- Hair, as volume sitting above and around the skull.
Checking your own work
Flip the drawing horizontally. Every error you have stopped noticing will jump out. If you are tracing with the camera overlay there is a flip control built in, which makes this a two-second check rather than a chore. Squinting works too — it removes detail and leaves you with the shapes.
Tracing a face teaches you proportion far faster than freehand attempts do, but only if you then redraw it without the guide. Trace it, fade the guide, draw it again, then draw it from nothing the next day.
Faces to practise on
Portraits is the largest category on the site. For stylised faces, anime is easier to start with because the features are simplified.