Part1: Face Proportions For Portrait Drawing: The Ultimate Guide

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Search the internet or your library for information on the proportions of the human face. You will find a ton of information, but each source seems to say something different. This is video 1 in a series of videos which will make you less confused about the proportions of the human face. You will be less confused, because I will give you proof that a lot of the formulas that you learned for portrait drawing were wrong. At the end of this video, I will give you a new formula to help you draw the human face from memory.

In this experiment, I have taken the most common formulas for facial proportion and tested them on a group of people in a similar pose. I used a computer program to help me take accurate measurements. I made sure that my control group was comprised of both males and females and were of many different races.

So lets get started with a very common proportion rule. The question is- Is it one eye length between each eye? The answer, as you can see, is yes. But this was the only rule that I found to be universally correct.

Lets stick with the eyes for question 2. It is often stated that it is five eye lengths across the face. It turns out that for 9 of the 10 people that I tested, that rule is incorrect. I found that if you included the width of the ear on to the face, then that rule would be closer to true, but definitely not universal. Of the control group, only one person, had a fit, so we can conclude that this proportion does exist, but it does not fit the majority of people and thus, shouldn't be part of a drawing formula.

I recently saw on the internet that the outer corners of the nose, should line up with the inner corners of the eye. Only one of 10 people that I tested proved that proportion to be true. There were also two people who came close. Once again, we can conclude that this proportion does exist, but it does not fit the majority of people and thus, shouldn't be part of a drawing formula. Most often, the outer nose lined up where the tear ducts met the white of the eye. For the record, I hope that the lady in the bottom left never catches a cold.

Question four asks: Does the pupil and iris line up with the corners of the mouth when the face is calm? I will warn you that this was the most difficult to answer, because the mouth is the most variable feature of the face. The shape slightly differs from person to person and it moves a lot. I found that only two people had eyes and mouths which lined up, but, everybody except the gentleman on the top left was extremely close. So, despite the results, I would include this measurement for a general face proportion formula, but I would also be sure to observe the person who I am drawing to get my answer. It is also important to note that 8 of the 10 peoples mouths fit between the lines drawn down from the middle of each eye.




Since question five is related to the placement of the ears, I changed a few of the photos in the control group. In order to gauge this, I had to be able to see the ears clearly. Most portrait formulas state that the ears go from the top of the eye to the bottom of the nose. This turned out to be a pretty accurate statement. Question six is directly related to question five and asks whether the nose and the ears are generally the same size. Although there were only two exact measurements, every other person was very close in measurement. So we can conclude that it is Accurate to say that the ear generally goes between the upper eye and the bottom of the nose and is very close in height to the nose.

Now lets test the most common and controversial face proportion question.....Are the eyes at the exact half way point of the head? You will find top results on the search engines stating that this is the case. I once had a teacher who insisted this and took off points on any student who disagreed with him.....If he only did his homework! The eyes are NOT at the center of the head. The actual middle of the head is just below the orbits of each eye. There was only one person whose eyes were measured as the center of their head, and of course it was MacAulay Culkin.

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[pilgrimsjournal]

Hi Merrill. The instructor you spoke of earlier in the video. Would that be Mr. Saplo? I may not have the spelling correct.

[kazanjianm]

@pilgrimsjournal Do you mean the stubborn one?

[Promistor]

awesome merrill I learned that alot of the art teacher's ''rules'' as she call's it are wrong!Yess i'm gonna win 10 bucks from her lol

[kazanjianm]

@Promistor I hope you got your 10 bucks Promistor!!!!!! THANK YOU as always!

[savvisMJ]

that was very helpfull.thank you Merrill:):):)

[kazanjianm]

@savvisMJ You are welcome savvisMJ!

[ebutuoyjg]

this is terrible and inaccurate. his photos are taken from all sorts of angles, at various distances and zoom levels from the subject. the models heads are also in very different positions with some looking up/down and left/right. thus most of the images have different degrees of distortion and foreshortening. models also have their mouths wide open in some cases. the eyes are in the middle of the head. measure your friends and dont include the underside of the chin in your measurements.

[paradoxicalART]

NOOOOOOOOO! EVERY THING I KNOW IS A LIE! 

[sycodemon64]

some of this is vaguely useful, but most of the proofs of it being wrong are on photos that have, at the very least, terrible angles and head positions. As I usually only need it to look in proportion, I'll probably still just use the common ways of working it out.

[pilgrimsjournal]

@kazanjianm He has a twin brother in NC. 

[Dan0622]

LOL the kid that fits five eyes across his face is the actor from Home Alone.

[artofuldis]

gentlemen in top right is only model holding sraigt head and thats why you called him extremely close to ideal.

[artofuldis]

There is not such a thing in the world as Realistic Human Proportion Tutorial. And id some body makes on tell him that there is no such a thing Realistic Proportions which fits to more then one person.Every one is special. BUT all this reference and quotation to proportion theories is actually IDEALISTIC PROPORTIONS and every normal artist with more less school behind KNOWS that if you draw as you see it always looks ugly. kazanjianm stop confuse people with bad photographs and poor knowledge!

[artofuldis]

Those photographs which you where using where bad examples, taken in wrong angle. Only way to check facial proportions is : a) to do from life model b) is to use profile photograph c) is use frontal portraits if picture is taken with normal lens not too close to the face, to avoid fish eye effect and STRAIT! Because if person lifts nose up, it is seems that eyes line is much higher than center (1,3,5: face in top line and black guy from second line) Make sure that nose matches with earlobe.

[MrBlazzzzer]

amazing dude...just amazing!!!!!

one question , are you friends with mark crilley cos i find his tutorials very helpful too just like yours...the only problem is that both of you do very less or no landscape drawings!! why :(