How to draw a human nose

The nose is a whole poem, a world, a universe! A universe of cartilages, soft tissues, and bones. And it is worthy of being explored and drawn. We see around many different types. Some have a nose thin and sharp, like the tip of the hardest pencil, while others have a large and round one. Therefore, we have chosen three historical and mythological characters to understand how the nose works and how to draw it. The silhouettes of Antinous, Mephistopheles, and Gnaeus Pompey are very different from each other. Antinous has a straight nose, without relief or protrusions. Compared to him, the two adjacent ones bend and swell wildly. However, the internal structure is the same for all, despite the external difference in volumes. The tips, wings, bases, backs of noses, and переносицы marked in different colors are clearly visible. And most importantly, they have not disappeared, have not changed places with each other, and are located in identical areas on the face. You've probably noticed that noses of older people seem very large, and in shape they are so interesting that you want to look at them forever, exploring the curves of wrinkles, the overpasses of the wings, and the ramps of the nose bridge takeoffs. This is true: cartilaginous tissues do not stop growing until old age, so ears and noses enlarge and enlarge. If we compare the nose of the apostle Albrecht Durer and a young man from the portrait by Nikolai Feshin, we will see the difference in the proportions of the nose and face. The young man's nose fits into the height of the central third, while the old man's nose not only does not respect the boundaries, it blatantly ignores them. Such deformation gives a strong resemblance of the apostle's nose to an eagle's beak, making the image caricatured. Let's draw the nose of three personalities at once and see how the same elements of the nose structure change during the drawing process. You can draw with traditional materials — a graphite pencil with hardness HB or B, or on a tablet in Procreate or Photoshop. Stage 1 We start from a simple dummy, very simplified and covering the entire silhouette of the nose. Remember the heads from Easter Island and their noses and mark similar prisms of our noses. Stage 2 Check that all horizontal axes are parallel, otherwise our noses will be crooked, and their elements will lose connection with each other. Stage 3 Between the upper edge of the nose bridge and the tip of the nose, we find the middle, the approximate location of the connection of the nasal bone with the cartilage — a quarter of this distance will be the attachment of the nose wall to its tip. Draw the bend of the nose bridge провал and the выступы of the nose горбинки. Stage 4 With ovals, we mark the volume of the горбинки, кончика, крыльев носа and основания кончика. Compare the differences in the configurations of these volumes: the first nose has no roundness of the горбинки on the back of the nose, it is very straight. Stage 5 Add a line of the vertical axis according to the shape of the nose — it helps to see the relief of the nose and understand the distribution of shadows. Also mark the edges of the turns of the cartilages of the nose tip and nose bridge, draw the edges of their turns with light lines. Stage 6 Add the wings and the base of the nose tip. Do not forget to mark with light lines and turning hatching the bends of the forms. Stage 7 We proceed to working with tone: all side surfaces and bases of noses are turned away from the light, so we shade them into shadow with light strokes of the side of the pencil lead. Excessive auxiliary lines from the construction will overload the tonal drawing and create visual noise, so we erase them and weaken the lines of the axes and sections. Stage 8 Add contrasts on the most protruding details — on the tips of the noses, we clarify the edges of the turns of the горбинки, nasolabial folds, wings with a stroke. Stage 9 At the final stage, with wide strokes (with the side of the pencil lead), we additionally darken the lower area of the nose, summarize the side walls, add shadow at the turn of the nose bridge. Such a final chord makes our sketch more complete and finished. We can say that the diversity of noses is not even a universe, but a multiverse, a small piece of which we have studied. And how many more noses, gypsum and marble, bronze and living ones, can be drawn! Do not stop there and rather run to fill sketchbooks and tablet memory with sketches of this beautiful part of the face!

Video lesson on drawing the nose by Azat Nurgaleev

The nose exists in a group with the mouth and eyes, and they, in turn, with the skull, muscles, and ligaments, and all together form the kingdom of the head and portrait. If you have always wanted to learn to understand the relationship between the parts of the face and work with color, then on the course Digital portrait there is an opportunity to study the nuances of drawing the structure of the head, the structure of its details, techniques of digital painting. We promise, there will be definitely more than three noses there! 🙂 Do you want to learn how to draw a nose correctly? Then be sure to sign up for our cool Free course «Basics of portrait»‎. We promise: after the course, you will gently fall in love with drawing the nose and will never call this topic complicated or boring!