Front-view facial proportions
A 2-session unit for middle school or high school. Students learn the front-view proportion canon — eyes on the halfway line, the face divided into thirds, a head five eyes wide — using the portrait face overlay to find these landmarks in real faces and then build a balanced face of their own.
Learning objectives
By the end of the unit, students will:
- State the front-view proportion canon — eyes halfway down the head, the face in thirds, the head about five eyes wide
- Locate these landmarks on photographs of real, varied faces and confirm the canon is an average, not a rule
- Block in a front-view face on the guide, placing the features in their canonical positions before refining
- Adjust the canon to capture an individual likeness, treating proportion as a starting scaffold
Standards alignment
- VA:Cr2.1.6aDemonstrate openness in trying new ideas, materials, methods, and approaches in making works of art and design.
- VA:Cr3.1.6aReflect on whether personal artwork conveys the intended meaning and revise accordingly.
- VA:Re7.2.6aAnalyze ways that visual components and cultural associations suggested by images influence ideas, emotions, and actions.
Materials
- Internet-connected device per student (Chromebook, iPad, laptop — a phone works in a pinch)
- Pencil (HB and 2B), eraser, and paper, 8.5×11 in or A4, two or three sheets
- A mirror per student or a forward-facing selfie, plus a small handout of 6–10 varied front-view face photos
- A ruler for the first block-in (freehand after that)
Lesson sequence
The proportion map of the face
45 minutesAsk students to guess: how far down the head are the eyes? Almost everyone says about two-thirds of the way down. Have them check in a mirror with a finger — the eyes sit roughly halfway. This surprise is the hook: our intuition about our own faces is wrong, because we pay attention to features below the eyes and forget how much skull sits above.
- (3 min) Students open the portrait face overlay in the tool and upload their first front-view face photo.
- (5 min) Introduce the canon in three parts: the eyes sit on the line halfway between the top of the skull and the chin; the face from hairline to chin splits into three equal thirds (hairline to brow, brow to nose, nose to chin); and the head is about five eye-widths wide, with one eye-width of gap between the eyes.
- (4 min) Students fit the overlay to the photo and check each landmark in turn, noting where the real face matches the canon and where it gently departs.
- (13 min) Across the face set, students measure each one against the canon and record the differences — a longer chin here, wider-set eyes there. The point is that the canon is an average that real, varied faces orbit around.
- (5 min) Students measure their own mirror face against the overlay and write down two ways theirs differs from the average.
- Were you surprised by how high the eyes sit? Why do you think the guess is usually wrong?
- Across the faces you measured, which landmark varied the most from person to person?
- If every face followed the canon exactly, what would be lost?
Drawing a balanced front-view face
45 minutesStudents draw a quick oval for the head, a vertical center line, and a single horizontal line halfway down. In thirty seconds they have the two most important guides on the page. Everything else hangs off these two lines.
- (3 min) Students choose a reference face and open the overlay on it for constant comparison.
- (5 min) They draw the head shape, the center line, the halfway eye line, and the two thirds lines — the full proportion scaffold, lightly.
- (12 min) Students place the features in canonical positions: eyes on the halfway line one eye-width apart, the nose at the lower third line, the mouth about a third of the way from nose to chin, ears between brow and nose.
- (7 min) They adjust toward their actual reference — nudging the spacing to capture this person rather than the average — and refine the features.
- (3 min) Students pair up and check each other's faces against the overlay: are the eyes truly halfway, or did they creep up too high?
The single most common error is placing the eyes too high, leaving too little skull above — the same instinct from the warm-up reasserting itself mid-drawing. A quick overlay check at the block-in stage catches it before features are committed, when it is still a one-line fix rather than a full erase.
- Did starting from the canon make the face easier to draw, or did it feel like a constraint?
- Where did you have to break the average to capture your particular reference?
- Which landmark, once placed correctly, fixed the most other problems?
Point students to the portrait face overlay page and the Loomis head guide to go further.
Why a canon, if every face is different
It is fair for a student to ask why we bother memorizing proportions when no two faces are alike. The answer is that the canon is not a target — it is a baseline you measure against. A trained eye does not draw the average face; it sees instantly how a particular face deviates from the average, and those deviations are exactly what make the likeness. You cannot perceive that someone has unusually wide-set eyes or a long chin until you carry a reference for “usual” in your head. The canon installs that reference. Beginners who skip it tend to draw the same generic face every time, because they have nothing to push against.
The overlay accelerates this by making the comparison visible and immediate. Instead of vaguely sensing that something is off, a student can see that the eyes they drew sit above the halfway line, or that their nose landed short of the lower third. Over a few sessions, the measured comparison becomes an internal habit, and the guide comes off. This is the same logic behind every proportion system on the site, from the head canon to the eight-head figure: structure first, so that observation has something to correct. The goal is not a face that obeys the rules but an artist who knows the rules well enough to bend them on purpose.
Assessment rubric
4-point scale per criterion:
| Criterion | 4 — Mastery | 3 — Proficient | 2 — Developing | 1 — Beginning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reading the canon (session 1) | Locates every landmark accurately across varied faces | Locates most landmarks | Locates some landmarks | Cannot yet find the landmarks |
| Block-in proportions (session 2) | Eyes halfway, thirds and width all correct | Proportions mostly correct | Some landmarks off | Proportions not yet controlled |
| Capturing likeness | Deliberately departs from the canon to capture the person | Some individual adjustment | Generic face, little adjustment | No reference to the individual |
| Craft of the drawing | Clean, refined, complete | Complete with minor issues | Rushed or partial | Incomplete |
Extensions
- Cross-disciplinary (anatomy): Students compare the adult canon to a baby's proportions — the eyes sit lower and the cranium is proportionally huge — and discuss how proportion signals age.
- Differentiation: Advanced students take the same face into three-quarter view, where the center line bows and the far side compresses. Students who need more support stay on the front-view canon and focus on one feature at a time.
- Critical thinking: Have students measure several portrait paintings or cartoon characters and discuss how artists exaggerate the canon — bigger eyes, smaller chins — to signal youth, cuteness, or villainy.
- Homework: Students draw three family members or friends from photos, each labelled with one way the face departs from the average.
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