The head in profile

The profile view of the head is the easiest to draw, as there are no awkward angles and no perspective. We have already touched upon aspects of this topic but here is our proportions diagram again as it applies to just the profile:

This clarifies the placement of the features in relation to one another.

Form

We can think of the profile as series of forms projecting out and projecting in.

Each individual, of course, has their own pattern. This is the basis of traditional silhouette art, like this one of (probably) Jane Austen from the early 19th century:

The lips tend to sit on a backward slope from the tip of the nose to the top of the chin:

Like any drawing of the head, a profile reveals the shape of the skull beneath. The hair reveals the general outline of the skull – obviously on a bald person this shape is unconcealed. We can see the superciliary arch or eyebrow ridge as a projection above the eyes; the recess of the eyes betrays the eye sockets. Assuming we are drawing more than just the silhouette, we can sometimes perceive the zygomatic bone as a prominence on the cheek, causing a slight shadow beneath. (We refer to this as having ‘high cheekbones’.)

The art of the tilt

Artists often avoid a straight-on profile by slightly turning the head. Robert Beverly Hale nicely suggested it was “for the same reason that a skillful pianist loves to play a difficult passage”. On a human level, we can convey a person’s personality easier if we have more of the face available to work with. But Hale understands that as artists, we partly approach a human subject as a form that needs to be explained. For example:

...The form may be better brought out in a tipped profile for various subtle reasons. One of them is that in a tipped profile you can show the curve of the line where the lips meet, as this line curves around the teeth. In a level profile, this line becomes straight and a straight line can scarcely reveal curving form.
(Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters, 1964)

Look at this drawing by Charles Bargue:

At first glance this seems to be a profile view, and broadly speaking it is. But when we look carefully, we realise we can see a tiny bit of the far eyebrow and eyelash, and a telltale V-dip in the top lip followed by a sliver of the lip continuing beyond the middle line of the face. These would not be visible in a straight-on profile view.

Therefore when we draw a head in profile, we must establish more than merely the proportions. We must also choose our tilt and perspective. The profile could be straight on or have a tilt – if the latter we must choose the axis of the tilt. The head could be simply turned on the vertical axis, towards or away from the viewer, or there could also be a turn on the horizontal axis, i.e. seeing the head from above or below.

To wrap up, here is a head in profile that I painted: