Learning and Drawing the Head above Eyelevel!

Unlike looking down on someone, where the features are hidden, looking up at someone means you’ll be expanding on the facial features.

Again, it’s not easy but we’ll get through it.

Like the previous lesson, you will need the three point perspective grid. This time, the grid is now pointing up instead of pointing down.

So open up your digital art program of chose, download the grids, and let’s start!

1. The skull diagram once more

We will not get anywhere without the skull diagram as it’s our main source of reference. The guide lines are an invaluable source of information to know where to start drawing from.

One problem that the skull diagram doesn’t offer too much hints on is the nose. Since it’s just an empty hole, you have to image the nose in its proper three dimensional forms.

Once more, you are looking for the ‘+’ intersections to work from. At the same time, draw up your three point perspective grid if you haven’t already as that will help you out with looking at the head above eyelevel.

2. The front profile

Right from the very beginning, the head above eyelevel presents one big problem when drawing it from the front profile: you no longer have a perfect spherical shape to work with anymore.

This is due to the protrusion of the chin and the fact that the face doesn’t follow the curvature of the sphere.

What this means that you will have to imagine a semi-flat cube form to work from.

Moreover, you will need to restructure how you will draw the nose. Ask yourself how the nose will look like in that position. Some tips will be to use the hole in the skull where the nose is and build on that triangular shape.

Also look at the ears and the mouth. The upper lips will show up more while the ears are curved downwards.

3. The side profile

The main challenges on the side profile are drawing the underside of the chin, the alignment of the eyes and the nose, the relationship with the upper lip and the lower lip, and the head’s general curvature.

Another concern is the back of the head. You will need to draw more of the back where the hair meets the head. This is possibly by compressing the ears slightly where the ‘+’ intersection is.

One more difficult objective to note is the rest of the body. Due to the position, you will see the character’s shoulders. This means a part of the neck will be covered up.

All in all, you may want to look at real life references for this part as it is relatively difficult to do on your own even with a mirror.

4. The three-quarter profile

Yet another difficult profile to master!

Do what you need to help you out with this one like including a few more perspective guide lines if you need it. You may need to draw and redraw to get the right angles and shapes.

Including the challenges from the other profiles, the focus here is to look at how the cheeks protrude from the face. To make it a little bit easier, if you look at the features, most of it is very similar to the head in the side profile diagram.

The only difference is adding that extra dimension where the other eye, the other part of the lips, the partial nostril openings on the other side, and the cheek bones.

Remember to keep the same curvature of the sphere when you are drawing this profile.

Yet again, you may want to consider looking at references if you need help with this perspective. The more you draw these difficult perspectives, the more your brain and your mind can relate to it.

With that said, drawing the head above eyelevel is something you want to have a good grasp of as drawing your characters in perspective is very helpful in the long run.

As always, have fun with learning and keep up the motivation to continue to practicing these tough concepts! The more you do, the more you’ll improve!

Return from Head Above Eyelevel to Paint Faces.
Return from Head Above Eyelevel to the 2d Digital Art Guide.