Most people assume drawing a realistic portrait starts with capturing a likeness, or nailing the exact shape of the eyes.

But the real foundation is simpler: getting the face proportions right before you even think about shading. Get those basic ratios down, and the face will read as human even if your rendering is loose.

Get them wrong, and no amount of detail will save it.

The eyes sit mid-head

The most common mistake beginners make is placing the eyes too high on the head. You'd expect the eyes to sit around the upper third, but they actually sit almost exactly halfway between the top of the skull and the chin. If you're drawing a standard grown-up face, measure the full height of the head, from crown to chin, and mark the vertical center. That line is where the eyes go. It feels counterintuitive at first, but once you test it against a photo reference, you'll see it holds nearly every time. The forehead just takes up more space than you think.

One eye width apart

Now for the horizontal spacing. The classic rule is that the face is about five eye widths across. The eyes themselves sit in the middle two sections, and the space between them should measure roughly one eye width. So if you draw the left eye, you can use its own width to check the distance to the right eye. The outer edges of the nostrils usually line up with the inner corners of the eyes, which gives you a quick cross-check while you're sketching. A face with eyes too close together or too far apart will instantly look off, even to someone who can't say why.

The nose ends at the ear lobes

Here's a less obvious landmark. The bottom of the nose, where the nostrils meet the upper lip, marks the midpoint between the eyes and the chin. That's straightforward. But the nose also has a horizontal relationship: the width of the nose at its base is roughly equal to the distance between the inner corners of the eyes. And if you drop a line straight down from the inner corner of each eye, it should pass right along the sides of the nose. The ears align vertically with the eyes and the base of the nose. The top of the ear lines up with the brow, and the bottom lines up with the bottom of the nose. So when you're drawing a profile view, the ear sits between those two horizontal lines, not floating higher or lower.

The mouth and chin follow thirds

After you've placed the eyes and nose, the lower face breaks into thirds. From the bottom of the nose to the bottom of the chin is one unit, and the mouth sits about one third of the way down from the nose. That puts the lips closer to the nose than you might expect, leaving a longer chin area. The corners of the mouth usually align with the center of each eye, not the outer edges. So when you're sketching a smile or a neutral expression, check that the mouth corners don't stray too wide. For children, the proportions shift: the eyes sit lower on the face, the forehead is larger, and the jaw is smaller. That's why a child's face reads as softer and less angular than a grown-up's.

Proportions vary, but the ratios anchor you

No two faces are identical, and that's what makes portraiture interesting. Some people have wider-set eyes, some have a longer nose, some have a thinner upper lip. But these basic ratios give you a reliable starting grid. Once you've blocked in the head using these landmarks, you can push and pull individual features to capture a specific likeness. Draw a generic face first, then adjust. You'll find it much easier to spot what's unique about your subject when the underlying structure is solid. A good exercise: take a photo of a face, draw the grid lines over it, and see how closely it matches these rules. You'll notice small deviations, but the overall pattern will hold.

When you pick up a pencil to sketch a face, start with the midpoint for the eyes and the one-eye-width spacing. Let the nose and mouth fall into place from there. You don't need to memorize every measurement, just the few that anchor the whole structure. Once those are right, the rest of the drawing has room to breathe. Give it a try on a simple front-facing portrait this weekend, and see how much more convincing it looks before you even add shading.