How to Draw a Head Looking Up

Welcome to this step by step tutorial! If you are learning how to draw the headshape I have a free worksheet below that will help you practice!

I also have a video tutorial that walks you through these worksheets below, and below that you can find the step by step for drawing a head that is looking up.

Step 1. Sphere

• When drawing the head we always start with a sphere because its the largest form of the skull

• On the free worksheets, we go over the basic skill of drawing spheres, if this feels really challenging I would recommend taking some time to practice the first two pages of the worksheet before drawing the rest of the head.

• If you want to practice the basic forms you can check out the tutorial here (Open in a new window)

Step 2. Side Plane

• Draw in a circle that defines the side plane of the head where the ears will go.

• In this step, we are starting to see the orientation of the head. You can see that the head is facing towards the left because we have drawn the flat side towards the right, we can reverse the orientation by drawing the flat side on the left.

Step 3. Center Line

• Draw in the centerline which curves down from the top and then extends straight down. This step can be tricky because we are following the curve of the top of the head and then drawing a straight line at an angle.

• This line is very important for adding the features because it tells us where to place them, pay attention to this line as you practice drawing heads at different angles.

Step 4. Eye Region

• Add two lines running across the front of the sphere towards the top. This is the area where the eyes will sit, notice how we can see that the head is facing up towards the left.

• The eye region cuts into the sphere we drew earlier so you can see that the two lines connect into the sphere (look at the bottom right of the eye region in the example photo).

Step 5. Chin

• Add a line that slightly angled but close to horizontal towards the bottom of the centerline. The placement of this line will define how long the face is because this is where the chin is. 

• Play with the placement of this line to get different types of character designs.

Step 6. Box

• Add a box that connects to the chin line we drew earlier, this is probably the most difficult step in drawing the head when it’s looking up (or as seen from below). Don’t be shy about erasing and do this as many times as it takes.

• This box defines the under region of the head, this is where shading is usually applied.

Step 7. Cheeks

• Draw two curving lines on each side of the head connecting to the ends of the chin.

• Drawing these lines in helps us define the difference between the front and sides of the face, look at the example and see how the front is easier to see with these lines in place.

Step 8. Jaw Line

• Draw a line curving up from the bottom right corner of the box we drew in step 6. This is the jawline. 

• In this example drawing the jaw is very box-like, you can also use a more rounded approach but I recommend learning this style first because it’s easier to understand.

Step 9. Neck & Shading

• Add a cylinder for the neck that connects at the bottom left corner of the box and the back of the sphere. Pay attention to how the back of the neck is connected at the sphere and not the jaw.

• Add shading underneath the box and at the back of the neck so the drawing has more dimension

Step 10. Practice Regularly

• Drawing regularly is the only way to solidify our understanding so make sure to grab the free worksheets and practice as much as you can.

• Learning to draw is immensely satisfying, I can’t wait for you to feel the satisfaction of creating regularly! ^.^

This completes the drawing of the head shape when a person is looking up. There are tons more tutorials on the site that you can check out and I will be covering lots more topics over the next few months so stay in touch! I hope this was useful to you :D Thank you for letting me part of your artistic journey <3