Today we’re going to talk about how to draw side profiles.
Most people struggle drawing the head from the side because they don’t have the right framework.
You could have drawn all the features, but without knowing the proper placement, your head can look a little off.
Drawing is hard and I struggled for years trying to learn how to draw the head.
I even went to “art school” and graduated feeling I had left with no skills under my belt.
But when I learned this one trick, side profiles became super easy.
If you want to finally learn how to draw the head from the side, then I’m going to show you one technique that will change the way you look at side profiles.
I strongly believe anyone can learn to draw, they just need the right tools.
Today I’m going to show you how to massively improve this one drawing skill in 8 simple steps and create side profiles with confidence.
How to Draw the side profile
If I told you the only thing you need to know in order to learn how to draw the side profile was knowing how to draw the number 9, would you believe me?
Its probably hard to believe, but its true.
Step 1 Draw the nine outline
Now when I say 9 it’s simply a box with an extended line.
But you can see from the outline where the number nine exists.
The spine for the nine is the same as the spine used for your neck.
Step 2 Mark your features
Next divide the box of the 9 in half with a vertical and horizontal line.
This will represent as the guide for our eyes and where the ear will go.
Step 3 Outline your jaw line
Then draw a longer vertical line from the front of the box.
Next connect the bottom of box where the center vertical line meets and draw a diagonal line to meet the front of the vertical line we just drew.
Step 4 Add the neckline
Now create another line underneath the jaw to form our neck.
Step 5 Place your features
Its time to place the our main features: the eye, the nose, and the ear.
Starting with the eye we can place it on the horizontal line we first drew to mark our features.
The eyes are normally represented with a triangle.
Here’s a quick tip for eyes.
The eye looks like a triangle because it’s what the eye would look like if you cut it in half from the front view.
So that’s how you keep your eyes consistent if you drew a character with a different shape eye (here are a few examples):
Next the top of the nose starts where we drew our midline for the eye and the tip of it meets around halfway between the eye and the bottom of our box that we created for our original 9 shape.
After you created the nose add the ear using the vertical midline. Notice how the top of the ear touches the horizontal midline
Step 6 Add the details
The only few details left is drawing the mouth and the hairline.
The mouth is usually represented with a staircase and the top lip is usually further out then the bottom lip followed by the chin that connects to our jaw.
Then the location of the hairline is normally halfway between the eyes and the top of the skull.
Step 7 Add hair
Hair can be tricky so we are just going to keep it simple and draw a simple low cut.
Depending how low cut the hair is it sits just right above the skull, but I gave this character a little more room to play with.
Step 8 Clean up
Finally we can take out drawing and clean it up with some outlines and erase all of our guidelines.
Once we draw over them we can add the final touches for how we want our final character to look.
The Wrap up
There you have it, a simple process on how to draw the head from the side profile.
A few ways to help practice creating your own characters are:
- Find images and trace over those images to learn the structure
- Then use those references to practice using the steps to recreate the image (without tracing)
But before we wrap everything up I have to give credit to where credit is due.
I spent many hours searching, watching tutorials and practicing head drawings but when I found this technique it changed the game for me.
I stumbled upon this one artist named Rodgon, a phenomenal artist and excellent teacher.
He opened my eyes to see the simplicity of drawing the head and once I saw it I never saw heads the same way again.
This method taught me the simplicity of understanding form and how to see as an artist.
It made drawing fun for me again to the point where I found myself doodling side profiles randomly while at work or when I’m bored.
The last thing I want to say is there are tons of ways to learn how to draw and this is just one way that clicked for me and hopefully it does the same for you.