Learn How to Draw the Skull and its Proportions!

Before digitally painting the head, you need to understand and draw the skull. Unlike the facial features, which can change depending on the character traits you want, the skull rarely changes its shape.

Because of the consistent nature of the skull, I find no reason to learn it first as it will be your backbone into the world of painting characters in digital art, and any other media, for that matter.

For the most part, just follow along as I introduce the skull. Of course, when you want to really learn it, the best method is to actually duplicate what you see.

That is, draw the skull as you see them in this article!

1. Looking at the structure

No single shape can truly define the shape. My art teacher used to use a ball, and egg, and other round apparatus that she can get a hold of to get us to draw the skull properly. Unfortunately, these shapes don’t really catch the structure very well.

As a matter of fact, a perfect sphere is only the beginning of where the head measurements should take place.

One of the best methods is to divide the perfect sphere into four segments equally. This can be done before or after you have drawn your skull. Doing the circle before lets you learn where the starting points are.

However, drawing the circle later is also beneficial in that it tells you how close you are to getting the actual measurements of the skull.

To draw the skull, all I did is use the digital brush and roughly paint an outline of the skull with it. It’s not perfect but it’s just to serve a point.

After that, start up a new layer and then draw a circle and lines to link where the parts of the features are.

2. The ‘+’ intersection

As you can tell, not counting the upper part of the skull, it does not fit the spherical shape exactly. However, what you do get is a sense of where all the features are connected through proportions.

Your circular sphere should give you an indication of where everything should fit as dividing it in half correctly, in both vertical and horizontal directions, will give you the right guide lines.

What’s more, you should focus on where the intersections between the vertical and horizontal lines are.

On the front profile, the intersecting ‘+’ will give you approximately where you should begin the eyes in relationship to the rest of the head. On the side profile, it tells you where the moveable joint is for the ears.

3. Dividing the skull

Ask yourself some questions. If there is skin and muscles, what kind of outline will it create on my skull? How will my character’s face be placed upon the skull?

There’s even a rule called the ‘one-third rule.’ What this rule implies is how the skull is divided up into three distinct parts. Use this to help you out further.

From the hairline to the eyebrows, that’s the first division. From the eyebrows to the bottom of the nose, that’s the second division. Finally, from the bottom of the nose to the chin, that’s the final division.

When you start to draw the skull and then adding skin and muscles, use the divisions and the skull outlines to figure out the position of relative features. For example, your eyes will find perfectly in the center and will not exceed the eye sockets of the skull.

This will help you save grief in the long run!

4. Using the sphere

The last bit involves rotating the sphere to whatever the needed position will be. Of course, you won’t be doing this blindly. Again, use the ‘+’ intersection as your guide.

Where ever you move your sphere, the ‘+’ intersection will move along with it. Once you figured out the position of the intersection, try constructing the other one-third measurements around it.

The purpose is to get you to look at the skull mentally before you begin to draw the skull as the ability to construct objects on a mental level will help you out in the long run.

Then, if you feel comfortable, construct the skull from that angle! If you are unable to, it’s alright because we will learn how to construct the head in different perspectives later. Use this opportunity to use your imagination!

Stay tuned as we are going to add skin and muscles to the skull!

Return from Draw the Skull to Painting the Head.
Return from Draw the Skull to the 2d Digital Art Guide.