Ageing isn’t simply about how many years we have been alive. We age in different ways, and the process is affected by many things, including genetics, working life, ethnicity, health, income and so on. A person in a very poor country who has been over-worked in the sun since childhood will likely ‘age’ more quickly than a scion of the privileged classes who’s never worked in his or her life, especially if the latter favours plastic surgery. Conveying someone’s age convincingly is also about psychological changes. An old person will wear expressions you will not see on a toddler... and vice versa.
For convenience we will condense the long process of incremental changes into a few key stages. We’ll confine ourselves to the head and, as always, the notes here are rules of thumb. There is no substitute for the careful observation of real individuals. Children in particular can develop at very different rates, though most average out by adulthood.
Babies (age 1 month–1 year)
A baby’s skull needs plasticity to get through the birth canal and adjust to the rapidly growing brain, so it is composed of several parts that take a few years to fuse together into a single piece. In newborns it may look a bit misshapen. There is effectively no difference between boys and girls at this age.
A baby may seem challenging to draw, but you’re mostly only dealing with a different set of proportions. This goes for all children. They aren’t just smaller adults – their proportions are different, and getting those right is to crucial to drawing younger age groups accurately. The diagram below maps out the facial proportions at up to 1 year old:
A baby’s cranium is larger in proportion to the face, giving it the characteristic big forehead. Whereas an adult’s eye level is about halfway down the head, a baby’s eye level is below the half-way mark. The eyes are already about 75% of their full size, but with smaller eye slits and in a smaller head – giving the baby its big-eyed cuteness – and they seem slightly wider apart. The face only occupies about a quarter of the head. The relative sizes of the nose, mouth and chin are much the same, but they are closer together. The nose is more turned up with a rounded bridge. The brow ridge and cheekbones barely show and the eyebrows are light and delicate. The jawline and chin are receding and under-developed.
As the child gets older, the bottom part of the face, from the eyes down, grows downwards and outwards in proportion to the cranium. The eye level shifts upwards in the head, while the nose and jaw get longer. By the time we hit our teens, our eyes are on the halfway level like an adult’s. It is as if the lower features, and indeed the rest of the body, play catch-up with the cranium. This is why facial proportions are important to capturing a child’s age accurately.
As the child passes one year old, the features gradually drift upwards, though the eyes don’t yet reach the halfway line. The baby acquires a neck, and the hair grows thick enough to cover the head. The mouth looks pouty, with the top lip tending to protrude. Baby fat creates a small double chin. The child acquires a full set of baby teeth by the age of 2-3 years.
Andrew Loomis offers some good advice for drawing a baby’s head:
You will find that a certain blockiness of planes and edges also helps to put vitality into a drawing of a baby. Babies’ faces are so smooth and round that if we copy that quality too meticulously the result may lack character.
(Drawing the Head and Hands)
Artists too easily become sentimental when drawing babies, and to be fair, there is a risk of mawkishness when drawing any soft, large-eyed creature. Be on your guard!
Small children
Before puberty, girls and boys still look very similar and are largely differentiated by cultural markers such as hairstyles and clothing. Girls have slightly rounder contours, for example the jawline, and they have higher foreheads, but we can use the same proportions for both sexes.
As toddlers, children grow thicker hair and eyebrows while keeping their baby fat and their full cheeks and puckered lips. As they grow past that stage, they tend to look skinny, because they lose their baby fat while their muscle development hasn’t kicked in yet – this look continues through pre-adolescence.
The diagram below is for children aged around 7 years old. The rate of growth varies quite a lot across individuals, with some children shooting up early and others taking longer.
By now the child has a full head of hair. The face narrows, though it is still small, occupying less space than an adult’s. The nose lengthens and the bridge starts to form. At this age the ears start to grow ahead of the other features and can look big, giving boys in particular that ‘jug-eared’ look. The irises appear proportionally smaller as the head grows around them. The neck looks scrawny because the trapezius has yet to develop, making the head seem big. At around 4 years the chin and jawline start to develop to make room for the permanent teeth to come in later, which can create gaps between the child’s existing ‘baby teeth’.
Toddlers can be quite clumsy, but by the age of seven, children have good co-ordination and generally enjoy showing off their physical skills, and they can speak and read fluently.
Tweens
Children aged between about 9-12 have been labelled ‘tweens’ by American marketers, i.e. they are ‘between’ young childhood and adolescence. Opinions differ about the exact age range covered by the term, and indeed, this is an awkward age group to categorise. On one hand, it is simply an age range, succeeded by the teenage years. On the other hand, we must consider the onset of puberty, the process of physical changes that transform a child into an adult capable of sexual reproduction. This usually begins between the ages of 9-12 (the age range varies depending on whom you ask), but the process continues into the teens, and can make an early developer look older than they are.
It is useful at this age to show the neck and shoulders as well, as the ‘large head, skinny body’ look is still perceptible and helps confirm the subject as a tween rather than a teenager. The top of the eyes now touches the halfway line of the face, but they are not in the middle yet, and the hairline is still a little high. The mouth no longer has a puckered look. The baby teeth are gradually replaced by permanent adult teeth between the age of six to twelve, and the front teeth can look large.
In boys, the ‘jug-eared’ look usually fades out at puberty as the rest of the body catches up. The jawline develops but you should avoid making the corner below the ear too square, otherwise the subject will look like a teenager. The nose is still turned-up. Girls begin puberty roughly one year earlier than boys and their faces mature a little sooner, which can make them seem older than they are. They tend to have higher foreheads and hairlines than boys, and rounder cheeks.
Children at this age are full of curiosity, trying out new interests and seeking to define who they are as individuals.
Teenagers
A dramatic change takes place in people from 13 to 19 years old, so putting the process under a single heading is a convenience only. By the teens, the high cranium finally disappears and teenagers have basically the same proportions as adults – the difference lies more in their youthful freshness and energy.
The eyes may still appear fractionally large. The structure of the nose and jawline is nearly mature but isn’t quite as heavy as in fully adult men and women. The ears no longer look large. The softness of childhood gives way to greater angularity and stronger contours. In boys, the neck thickens and the Adam’s apple becomes prominent. Girls are more rounded and smooth. Both sexes can suffer from acne, which is linked to changing hormone levels during puberty.
With different body parts growing at various rates, coupled with their uncertainties of self, teenagers can come across as gangly and awkward. Human diversity, such as in height, strength of build, and so on, becomes more and more apparent as individuals reach their fully-developed, adult condition.
The body reaches maturity at around 18-21. From this point we enter a long, slow process of decline which becomes noticeable by middle age. We’ll discuss these changes in the next and final section.
Older people
If you like to explore faces, old people can make much more interesting subjects than the young. The thinning of skin and tissue reveals forms unknown on younger people. The details of an old face are partly formed by the repetition of typical expressions worn across a lifetime – for example, repeated creasing of the brow via the frontalis muscle eventually creates lines on the forehead. Traumatic experiences can further age a face, and external or lifestyle factors like sun exposure or chronic alcohol consumption can accelerate the process.
As we age, the skull loses some volume. The eye sockets grow larger, making the eyes deeper set, and loss of mass in the jaw may make the lower face look smaller relative to the rest. The flesh loses its smoothness, elasticity and firmness and begins to emaciate and sag. When drawing, think of the major forms of the face and of creasing, drooping or shrinkage around them. The process of emaciation can alter the general shape of the head.
Fine wrinkles begin to appear from the late twenties, most noticeably at the outer corners of the eyes. These are known as crows’ feet, and reflect years of squinting, smiling and laughing, hence their other label, ‘laughter lines’. Vertical ‘frowning lines’ appear between the brows, and horizontal ones on the forehead. The flesh above the eyelids droops and lines appear under the eyes that can turn into bags. Eventually fine wrinkles appear all over the face. All the lines get deeper as the years pass. However you can convey age without showing every individual wrinkle. Larger creases appear at key areas, such as a deepening of the nasolabial furrow.
As the skin thins and retreats, some of the underlying forms become more obvious. The cheekbones and jawline may stand out more, and the nose may become more bulbous. In both sexes the ears keep growing. Years of wearing earrings may cause longer lobes in women; men may get more hair growing inside their ears. Flesh sags around the chin and the side of the jaw, producing jowls; on the neck this loose hanging skin is sometimes known as a ‘turkey neck’.
The lips get thinner and wrinkles appear above and below. The philtrum flattens out, losing its delicate curve. Lines known as commissure lines, created by innumerable widenings of the mouth, fall from the corners of the mouth.
Our hair starts to turn grey or white as early as the thirties. It thins and the hairline retreats, a process much more pronounced in men, who sometimes lose their hair altogether. The eyebrows go grey too, and lose definition.
The skin loses its smoothness and becomes rougher. It sometimes becomes blotchy with age spots, which are particularly noticeable on the face, upper body and hands. Veins stand out more, e.g. on the hands.
While no one can escape ageing, black people seem to wrinkle less than white people, thanks to higher levels of melanin and thus greater protection from the sun (a major external contributor to skin ageing). There is a sexist convention that women’s ageing in particular must be concealed or flattered. In my view artists should reject flattery. There is no need for anyone to hide away from this inevitable and natural process, whatever the anti-ageing industry says.
What to do
A great exercise is to draw a young face then age it through several stages of ageing. This will force you to consider how the features are affected. Below is a set of studies I did (click to enlarge):
Alternatively you could try filling out an age progression meme like this one I came across on DeviantArt.
Ideally you should get to the stage where you can accurately draw someone of a chosen age from imagination, without reference.
Look at the people around you. Try to estimate their age, and be conscious of the cues that led you to the estimate. These won’t only involve the physical process: a person’s demeanour, clothes and so on can influence what age they seem. Of course there are countless pictures online that you can use for reference, but it’s most useful if you can find examples where you know the age of the person in the picture.
If there are particular age groups that you never draw, or have difficulty drawing convincingly, make a point of drawing lots of them.
