profile drawing tutorial | Illustrations of Tina and Mr. Bee

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profile drawing tutorial | October 8, 2008

If you have practiced my first portrait tutorial for drawing a perfectly proportioned human face viewed from the front, you are now ready for a bigger challenge; drawing a portrait from the side view, the profile. It will be helpful to have a photograph to look at for this exercise.

Grab some pieces of paper (the larger the better, because it’s always easier to draw bigger rather than smaller), a light colored pencil (I like light blue), a light red colored pencil, and one graphite pencil, get a board, easel, or other angled drawing surface. It’s never a good idea to sit at a table with your paper flat on the table in front of you. Your eyes will see a distorted perspective while drawing and when you pick up your paper to take a good look at it everything will be elongated.

Draw lightly a red rectangle closer to the top left of your paper. Draw a dashed line down the middle of your rectangle vertically.

Draw a light blue circle inside the top of your rectangle.

Draw a fat sunflower seed shape pointing closer towards the bottom left of your rectangle.

From the bottom of your circle up, break this area in half, and draw a line horizontally across.

From the line you just drew, down, break this area in half also, and draw another line across.

The ear falls to the right side of the dashed line, still inside the sun flower seed shape, in between the two horizontal lines you drew earlier. These mark the top and bottom of the ear. I’m drawing this with more detail, but you don’t have to as you practice drawing the profile.

The area to the left side of the vertical dashed line you will break up into five equal parts vertically, and draw another dashed line down, for the first fifth section on the left.

The eyebrow falls on the upper most horizontal line, with the eye slightly below it starting at the one fifth vertical line.

Break up the section below the ear into three equal horizontal sections.

The upper lip hits the left edge of your rectangle and the first 1/3 horizontal line. Remember to end the mouth at the dashed line that the eye hits. A person’s bottom lip usually starts a little to the right of the top lip. And the chin falls in the last 1/3 section you drew.

The bottom of the nose is in line with the bottom of the ear and protrudes slightly beyond your initial rectangle.

The rest of the scull follows most the big circle you drew ending close to the same horizontal where your circle ended, to start the neck.

I erased out my red and blue lines and added hair and a few lines to indicate a shirt.

Stay tuned for my other portrait drawing tutorials for the facial proportions from the 3/4 view. After you have the proportions down, I will go into the details of drawing each of the features. Remember to keep practicing!