51 Portrait Drawing Rules

51 Portrait Drawing Rules

This video is unique, never before all 51 portrait drawing rules were presented in one lesson. This tutorial is prepared by Vladimir London, a Life Drawing Academy tutor.

These rules are collected from various sources, including sketchbooks by Leonardo da Vinci, classical canons of head and face proportions, as well as discovered by Vladimir London during his long creative and teaching career. All these rules are taught to the Life Drawing Academy Correspondence Course students who receive unlimited personal tutoring from the academy teachers.

Such a canon of proportions is not set in stone. You can measure different models and discover many new proportions. What I want you to learn in this video is how to deal with portraits by drawing what you know instead of making amateur mistakes without understanding what to measure. Such a constructive drawing approach greatly helps in drawing portraits from life, memory and imagination and this is what we teach in the Life Drawing Academy courses.

I have to say that the proportions you see here are not absolute rules, but a guidance of what to measure from life and apply in drawing. Should all people have the same proportions, every face would look the same. With this in mind, let's begin.

Rule 1

The level of eyes divides the height of a head in half.

Rule 2

The height of a face is five-sixth of the height of a head.

Rule 3

The height of a face can be divided into three equal parts - from the top of a head to the eyebrows, from eyebrows to the base of a nose and from that level to the bottom of a chin.

Rule 4

The width between ears is comparable to two-thirds of the face's height.

Rule 5

The distance between the outer corners of eyes is comparable to the distance from the eyebrow to the middle of the chin.

Rule 6

The distance from the ear to the back of a head is the same as the distance from the upper eyelids to the base of a nose.

Rule 7

The distance from the bridge of a nose to an ear is the same as the distance from the bridge of a nose to the chin when seen in profile. This distance is also one-half of the head's height.

Rule 8

The distance from the eyebrow to the ear is the same as the height of the nose.

Rule 9

The distance from the bottom of the chin to the pit of the neck is equal from one-third to one-half of the face.

Rule 10

The height of an ear is equal to the height of the nose. The ear's bottom edge is at the same level as the bottom of the nose. The ear's top edge is at the same level as the top of the upper eyelid.

Rule 11

The eyebrow's end points to the lobule of an ear.

Rule 12

The width of an eyebrow is equal to the height of a nose.

Rule 13

The width of a nose wings is comparable to the distance between eyes.

Rule 14

The bottom edge of the lower lip divides the distance between the bottom of the nose and the bottom of the chin in half.

Rule 15

The distance from the bottom edge of the lower lip to the base of the nose divided into three equal parts gives the top and bottom edges of the upper lip.

Rule 16

The distance between eyes is equal to the width of one eye.

Rule 17

The width of a head is equal to the distance from the top of a head to the base of a nose.

Rule 18

The height of a head is equal to seven eyes.

Rule 19

The bridge of the nose is on the same level as the upper eyelid.

Rule 20

In the three-quarters view, there should be a small gap between the nose and the eye.

Rule 21

The corner of a jaw is one the same level as the line between lips.

Rule 22

The seventh vertebra is about one-half of the face lower than the base of a skull.

Rule 23

The axis of the first pairs of ribs is tilted between the pit of a neck and the seventh vertebra.

Rule 24

The sternocleidomastoid muscle inserts right behind an ear at the base of a skull. It spirals around the neck.

Rule 26

If you continue the trapezium's outlines, they will point to a chin.

Rule 26

The ear channel is aligned with the middle of the neck when seen in profile.

Rule 27

The width of an ear is two-thirds of its height. In some people, this distance measures as one-half of the ear's height.

Rule 28

The height of an ear can be divided into three equal parts. The top part is taken by the crura of antihelix. The middle part is concha. And the lower third is taken by lobule.

Rule 29

The line where an ear connects to a head is tilted at about a 15-degree angle.

Rule 30

The crus of the helix is not connected with the tragus. It inserts down into the concha.

Rule 31

The inferior crus is connected to a head and the superior crus of antihelix supports the helix.

Rule 32

The eye has a spherical shape enveloped by eyelids. The thickness of eyelids should be depicted in portraits.

Rule 33

The upper and lower eyelids are not symmetrical. Their axis is tilted.

Rule 34

The upper eyelid is a bit bigger and thicker than the lower eyelid and overlaps it.

Rule 35

The upper eyelid overlaps the iris more than the lower eyelid.

Rule 36

The iris is a circle that appears as an ellipse in perspective.

Rule 37

The distance from the top of the mouth to the bottom of the chin is one-fourth of the height of a head.

Rule 38

The width of a mouth is one-quarter of the head' height.

Rule 39

In the full-face view, the corners of a mouth are vertically aligned to the inner outlines of irises or pupils of eyes.

Rule 40

In profile, the distance from the chin to the neck is compatible with the distance from the mouth to the bottom of the chin.

Rule 41

In profile, the distance from the chin to the back of the neck is equal to the distance from the mouth to the top of the head.

Rule 42

In profile, the distance from the mouth to the ear is comparable to the thickness of the neck.

Rule 43

In profile, the distance from the chin to the ear is equal to one-half of the head's height.

Rule 44

The upper and lower lips of a mouth envelope three virtual spheres.

Rule 45

The lower lip is a bit shorter than the upper lip.

Rule 46

The upper lip of a mouth is protruding forward more than the lower lip.

Rule 47

The prominent points of the upper and lower lips of a mouth are aligned with the points of the chin.

Rule 48

The bottom edge of a cheekbone is on the same level as the bottom of a nose and the bottom edge of an ear.

Rule 49

The base of a skull is on the same level as the bottom of a nose and the ear channel. This is the level of the head's rotation axis.

Rule 50

All facial features and key-points of a skull must be parallel to each other in drawing.

Rule 51

For portrait drawing, it is better to use the parallel perspective than two-point perspective. As you can see, this drawing in parallel perspective is less distorted than the previous one in two-point perspective.

I hope you have learned a thing or two about portrait drawing rules. This is just a small example of lessons that students get in the Life Drawing Academy courses. Imagine how much more you will discover in this academy. There are two courses at life Drawing Academy - Online and Correspondence. In the Online course, you will get lifetime access to 52 video tutorials on how to draw realistic portraits and figures from life and imagination. This course also comes with unlimited support from the academy tutors, which includes your artworks critique. Such service is provided at no extra cost for as long as you need it.

However, if you really want to get the advanced level of drawing skills, take one of the best drawing courses available today on the Internet - Life Drawing Academy Correspondence Course. If you take this option, you will get a dedicated professional art teacher, who will guide you all the way step by step, task by task, teaching you all you need to know about drawing from basic fundamentals, such as constructive drawing principles, perspective, proportions and composition to such advanced topics as depicting emotions in portraits, sketching figures in motion, composing figurative artworks and so on. In this course, you are guaranteed to achieve the advanced level of drawing skills should you complete all 100 drawing tasks that will be demonstrated and explained in detail. All you need to do is to follow your individual drawing curriculum that academy tutors will design specially for you.

To learn good drawing techniques, enroll in the Life Drawing Academy course: