Why does my drawing of a face look wrong?

One error accounts for most of it: the eyes go too high. They sit halfway down the whole head, and almost everyone draws them in the upper third because hair hides the top of the skull.

Difficulty: beginner
Time: 30 min
Read: 5 min

Short answer

Draw the head as a ball with a jaw hung below it, then put the eye line exactly halfway between the top of the skull and the bottom of the chin. Everything else measures off that: the bottom of the nose roughly halfway from the brow to the chin, the mouth about a third of the way from nose to chin, and the ears spanning brow to nose base.

There is a specific reason this mistake is universal. What we register as a face is the front panel of features, and the cranium behind and above it barely registers at all — it is covered in hair and it carries no expression. So when people draw a head they draw the face and then add a small dome on top, which puts the eyes at about two-thirds height instead of one half. The result is an oddly childlike, shrunken-skull look that everyone can see and few can name.

Where the features actually sit on a head

Step by step

Start with the whole cranium, not the face.Draw a circle for the ball of the skull. Slice a flat off each side where the temples are. Then hang the jaw and chin below and in front of it. The face occupies only the lower front of what you have drawn.
Find the total height, top of skull to bottom of chin, and halve it.That midpoint is the eye line. Rule it across. It will feel much lower than you expect and it is right — check it on any photograph with a ruler and on your own face in a mirror.
Divide the lower half again for the nose.The base of the nose falls roughly halfway between the eye line and the bottom of the chin. This is an average rather than a law, but it is a very good starting point.
Put the mouth nearer the nose than the chin.The line between the lips sits roughly a third of the way down from the nose base to the chin. Drawing it centrally between the two is another common cause of a face that reads as wrong without an obvious reason.
Space the eyes one eye-width apart.The gap between the two eyes is about the width of one eye. The full head at eye level is about five eye-widths across, which means there is also about one eye-width from the outer corner of each eye to the side of the head.
Set the ears between the brow and the base of the nose.The top of the ear aligns roughly with the brow line and the bottom with the base of the nose. Ears drawn too small and too high are the second most common proportion error after the eye line.
Check the width of the mouth against the eyes.The corners of the mouth usually fall under the inner edge of each iris on a relaxed face, and wider when smiling. It is a fast, reliable check.
Verify the whole thing in a mirror or upside down.Hold the drawing to a mirror. Familiarity with faces is so strong that errors hide in plain sight, and reversing the image removes the recognition and leaves only the geometry.

Tips

Feel your own head. Put one finger on the outer corner of your eye and the other on the very top of your skull, then compare that distance to eye-to-chin. They are close to equal, and doing it physically convinces people in a way a diagram does not.
These proportions are the adult average. A baby's head is proportionally far bigger in the cranium, with the eye line well below halfway and a tiny jaw. Drawing a child with adult proportions makes them look like a small adult.
None of these divisions is a rule to impose on a portrait of a real person. They are a scaffold to catch gross errors, and the likeness comes from how the individual deviates from them.
The brow ridge, not the eyebrow, is a bony landmark and is far more reliable than hair-based features when measuring.

Common mistakes

Drawing the face first and adding the skull afterwards — There is never enough room left, so the cranium comes out too small and the eyes end up high. Build the whole head first and place the features into it.
Making the eyes larger than life — Enlarging the eyes is a strong stylistic instinct and it fights against realism. Measure the eye against the width of the head — five eye-widths across is a shock the first time.
Forgetting the head has depth — A skull is an egg, deeper front-to-back than it is wide. Drawing it as a flat disc with features on it is what makes a three-quarter view collapse.

If it doesn't work

The face looks childlike or doll-like

Cause: Eyes too high, cranium too small — Fix: Rule the halfway line on the existing drawing. If the eyes are above it, extend the skull upwards rather than moving the eyes down — usually the head simply needs to be taller.

The face looks squashed and heavy

Cause: The eye line is correct but the features are crowded into the bottom — Fix: Check the nose base at halfway between eyes and chin, and the mouth a third down from the nose. Crowding usually means the mouth has drifted too low.

Something is wrong but you cannot see what

Cause: Familiarity blindness — Fix: Mirror it, photograph it, or view it at thumbnail size. All three defeat recognition and expose relationship errors.

Questions people ask

Do these proportions vary between people?

Yes, and that variation is exactly what makes a person look like themselves. The eye line at halfway holds remarkably well across adults; the divisions below it vary a great deal, and it is the deviations you draw.

Should I use the Loomis method?

It is one good scaffold among several — a ball with the sides sliced flat, a centre line and a brow line, then the jaw constructed off it. Any construction method that builds the whole cranium first will fix the eye-line problem.

Why do my drawings from photos have the same fault?

Because you are not measuring, you are recognising. Rule a line across the photograph itself at the eye level and see where it falls relative to the top of the hair. It is a genuinely surprising exercise.