How to draw a male side profile
Hello and welcome to Anatomy of a Sketch!
Today, we will walk through a tutorial on drawing a side profile, specifically a male side profile.
There are a few small details that typically determine the gender of the character solely based on their facial structure.
I have another side profile tutorial on AOAS, based explicitly on drawing a female side profile.
You can find the link at the end of this post.
Let’s get started!
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Before we get started, I want to state that this tutorial is an anatomy tutorial, and is not meant to reflect anything other than female anatomy from an educational standpoint.
How to draw a male side profile
I remember learning in my Anthropology class in college about the structure of skulls.
An Archaeologist could tell if a skull was male or female just from looking at the structure!
This totally blew my mind because I figured that all skulls are shaped the same.
The differences start at the forehead.
In female skulls, the forehead appears rounder.
This is because the male brow bone protrudes forward significantly, while the female ones don’t.
This gives the male forehead a more flat appearance.
There are also differences in the jaw length and jawline, as well as the chin, and you can see those in the example below.
Here is an example of what the actual skulls look like (click the photo below to read the article this photo is from.)
Photo credit to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
Step-by-Step Process
Let’s go through drawing a side profile of a male character step by step.
This will be a basic, four-step drawing process for this tutorial.
Step 1. Sketch the rough side profile
With any character’s side profile, we will start by drawing a circle.
Next, we will draw a curved line downward that will be the front of the face.
The corner of the jaw is the halfway point of the skull.
You can draw a line from the corner of the jaw that would cut the circle above in half.
The next most important thing to note about a side profile is the back of the head.
I ended up lengthening it back just a touch.
A big mistake people make when drawing side profiles is not accounting for the back of the head and making the head appear flat or too small.
Step 2. Find your proportions
Outlining the nose, mouth, and ears is the next step.
You can see below that I use proportion lines, and that this really works well to map out the facial features.
The top of the ear and the browline should be about even,
and the bottom of the ear and the bottom of the nose should be even.
When learning how to draw a male side profile, the bridge of the nose and brow line should be a prominent feature.
We want to make sure (if we want the sex of the character to be obvious) to emphasize these features.
I also use a line of reference to find where the eye will sit.
You want the front of the eye to be about even with the corner of the mouth.
Step 3. Draw the eye and eyebrow
The eye sits along the same line as the bridge of the nose, while the front of the eyebrow sits along the brow ridge.
The eyebrow will sit forward more, closer to the front of the face.
In the next step, you can begin to finalize your linework for the head shape.
Step 4. Outline and create details
In this step, I created a new layer and used a black pen for the final linework.
I filled in his eyes,
and put more detail on his nose and ear.
And this is how to draw a male side profile!
If you have any questions about this process, please feel free to leave a comment below and I will try to answer as soon as I can.
Want to take it a step further?
The next step to finishing this illustration would be to add hair,
and or to finish it with color.
I teach you how to color your illustrations just like the one below in my Patreon community.
I teach shading highlighting, shading, skin tone, lighting, and character design!
Want to learn how to illustrate in full color?
Sketching is so much fun and I LOVE linework!
But one of my favorite parts of being an illustrator is rendering my illustrations in full color.
Click the image above to join my Patreon community, and get instant access to this tutorial and more!
On Patreon, I post monthly FULL-COLOR tutorials for my Champion and Hero tiers!
These are so much fun, and Patrons are able to comment and ask questions as well as “like” posts and answer polls.
My Hero tier also receives a monthly vinyl sticker from me via snail mail!
These are such a big hit. Some of the ones we have done so far are Harley Quinn, Jane Foster’s Thor, Princess Leia, Aloy (Horizon Zero Dawn), and Captain Carter from Marvel’s What If?
And if you are a Patron, we do take polls so you can help pick which stickers I send each month.
Come join the fun at Patreon.com/LeahHarris
And if you are a Patron, we do take polls so you can help pick which stickers I send each month.
Come join the fun at Patreon.com/LeahHarris
Learn more with my next tutorial below!
What to draw next… Drawing side profiles (in more detail, female edition)
Thank you for reading this tutorial on how to draw a male side profile. See you in the next tutorial!
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Hi , i love your tutorials they helped me so much.i sutdied all of them what should i do now?lol
Thanks for this amazing stuf
-twins
Hey there! Thank you so much, I’m glad you love these tutorials! I am going to try to post 3-4 new art tutorials here a month, so be sure to check back soon. In the meantime, you can find more tutorials from me via Patreon.com/leahharris if you are interested in full-color tutorials. I should have something new here in the next few days though. Thanks again, and keep drawing!