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Draw another blank now, this time for a profile. The profile blank is a somewhat different shape—like an oddly shaped egg. This is because the human skull (Figure 9-17), seen from the side, is a different shape than the skull seen from the front. It’s easier to draw the blank if you look at the shapes of the negative spaces around the blank in Figure 9-17. Notice that the negative spaces are different in each corner.

Fig. 9-16. Albrecht Dürer, Four Heads (1513 or 1515). Courtesy of The Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum. Kansas City, Missouri (Nelson Fund).

If it helps you to see, draw in some symbolic shapes for nose, eye, mouth, and chin, making sure that you have first drawn the eye level line at the halfway point on the blank.

Fig. 9-17. The side-view blank. Note that (a) eye level to chin equals (b) eye level to highest part of the skull.

Placing the ear in a profile portrait

The next measurement is extremely important in helping you perceive correctly the placement of the ear, which in turn will help you perceive correctly the width of the head in profile and prevent chopping off the back of the skull.

On almost every head, the position of the ear doesn’t vary much. On your own face, use your pencil again to measure the length from the inside corner of your eye to the bottom of your chin (Figure 9-18). Now, holding that measurement, lay the pencil horizontally along your eye level line (Figure 9-19) with the eraser end at the outside corner of your eye. That measurement coincides with the back of your ear.

Putting that another way, the length from eye level to chin equals the distance from the back of the eye to the back of the ear. Make a mark for the ear placement on the eye level line of the blank, as in Figure 9-20. This proportion may seem a little complex, but if you will learn the measurement, it will save you from another stubborn problem in drawing the human head: Most beginning students draw the ear too close to the features when drawing a profile. When the ear is placed too close to the features, the skull is once more chopped off, this time at the back. Again, the reason for the problem may be that the expanse of cheek and jaw is uninteresting and boring, and therefore beginning students fail to perceive the width of the space correctly.

You can memorize this important measurement as a saying or mnemonic, similar to “i” before “e,” except after “c.” To place the ear in a profile portrait, memorize this mnemonic: eye level-to-chin equals back-of-the-eye to the back-of-the-ear.

Note that enlarging the features and diminishing the skull produce strong, expressive, symbolic effects, a device you can always use later if you wish. Right now, for this “basic training,” we want you to be able to see things as they really are in their correct proportion.

Visualizing is another useful technique for teaching the correct placement of the ear. Since you now know that two measurements are equal—from eye level to chin, and from the back of the eye to the back of the ear—you can visualize an equal-sided right-angle triangle (an isosceles triangle) connecting these three points, as shown in the drawing in Figure 9-12, page 170. This is an easy way to place the ear correctly. The isosceles triangle can be visualized on the model. See Figure 9-20, page 175.

Fig. 9-18.

Fig. 9-19.

Fig. 9-20.

Fig. 9-21. Check the location of the bottom of the ear relative to the upper lip.

Fig. 9-22. Locate also the point where the neck joins the skull (the place that bends) relative to the upper lip.

Practice seeing proportional relationships now by looking at photographs or drawings of people in the profile view and visualizing the isosceles triangle, as in Figure 9-12. This technique will save you from a lot of problems and errors in your profile drawings.

We still need to make two more measurements on the profile blank. First, holding your pencil horizontally, just under your ear, slide the pencil forward as in Figure 9-21. You come to the space between your nose and mouth. This is