How to Draw a Face in Procreate: Proportions That Work

Every face you draw that looks "slightly wrong" is usually failing for the same reason: the features are fine, but they're floating in the wrong places. Fix the proportions and even a rough sketch starts to look like the person.

This walkthrough follows Freya's facial outline lessons from her Portrait Academy, where she drafts a front-on portrait from scratch using nothing but a circle, a handful of guide lines, and a triangle. She teaches two paths to the same outline, drafting and tracing, and is refreshingly honest about when to use each. Both are below.

Set up: put the photo next to your drawing

Create a canvas that fits your screen (Freya's is around 2700 x 2000 px) and insert your reference photo directly onto the canvas, off to one side. Tap the wrench, choose Insert a photo, and slide left to pick Insert a private photo.

This is the quiet advantage of drafting on an iPad: the original sits right next to your draft at the same size, so you can compare ratios line by line instead of guessing. You'll delete the photo layer at the end anyway.

Freya works with the Peppermint pencil brush in a bright color for all the guide lines.

Think like a builder: the circle and the axis

Freya frames the whole method in one sentence: treat the face as a structure, the way a builder treats a building. Look for the geometry first, circles, rectangles and triangles, before you look for the person.

"When drawing portrait outlines or drafting any drawing, I want you to consider everything as a structure, similar to working in construction. There is a foundation pillar and other pillars to support the building."

Freya, in the Draft: Facial Outline lesson, Portrait Academy

The foundation here is a circle. Draw a circle that covers both cheekbones and ends at the tip of the nose. Hold your pencil at the end of the stroke and tap the screen with a finger from your other hand to make it perfect.

Then draw the vertical axis: a line down the middle of the face, through the center of the eyebrows and the tip of the nose. Check it against the photo. In Freya's reference it isn't a dead-straight 90 degrees, it slants very slightly, and she follows the slant rather than correcting it. The axis describes the face you're drawing, not an ideal face.

Seven lines that place every feature

With the circle and axis in place, the remaining guide lines go in one at a time, each measured against the photo:

1. Brow line: under the inner arch of the eyebrows. It sits a little below the circle's center and tilts slightly upward in her reference. If a line lands wrong, don't redraw it, grab it with the Selection tool and nudge it into place.
2. Nose line: under the nose, usually right at the bottom of the circle.
3. Chin line: here Freya measures with her fingers. Take the distance from the eyebrows to the bottom of the nose, then step that same distance down from the nose. That's where the chin ends.
4. Eye line: through the middle of the eyes. In her reference it lands almost exactly a third of the way down the space it sits in, and she counts it out loud to check: one, two, three.
5. Lip line: where the lips part. It looks like the halfway point between nose and chin, but it isn't. It sits slightly above halfway, and Freya draws it at half first, then moves it up.

Two more vertical lines mark the inner corners of each eye, drawn parallel to the central axis. Now every feature has an address.

The triangle that catches the eyes and lips

One more structural shape earns its place: draw a triangle from the ends of the brow line down to the chin point. Draw it on the reference photo too, and look at what lands on its edges. The outer corners of the eyes. The corners of the lips.

That triangle is your error detector. If your drawn features drift off those edges when the photo's features sit on them, you know exactly what to move before you've invested any rendering time.

From grid to outline

Add a new layer named Draft 1 and start drawing the actual face over the scaffolding, checking against the photo constantly. Freya starts at the cheekbone, curves down to the jaw, then to the chin, warning to keep the chin looking real rather than a cartoon "V". Ears sit level with the nose line. The hairline gets measured against the space above the circle.

Then the features, in her order: eyebrows first (she switches to the Eaglehawk brush in grey, draws the arch and keeps the underside a simple straight line for now), then the nose (a circle for the tip, small circles for the nostrils, a light line for the bridge and the shadow beside it), then the eyes.

For each iris she uses the same trick as the big circle: draw it, hold the pencil, touch the screen with a finger, and it snaps perfectly round. The inner and outer eye corners are not level, the outer corner sits higher, and she keeps flicking her eyes back to the photo to catch details like that.

Lips come last: the parting line sits on your lip guide, the corners land on (or just outside) the triangle, and the cupid's bow gets compared against the distance from the nose before it's drawn.

Or trace, and why that's fine

The second lesson in this module covers the other path: insert the photo as a private photo, drop its opacity, add a layer named Final Draft, and trace everything you see with the Peppermint brush, treating each stroke as if you were already inking.

Freya is direct about this. Tracing isn't cheating, professional artists use it, and if a customer is waiting on a commission it's the better option because the likeness is guaranteed and you skip the revision rounds. Drafting is how you improve; tracing is how you deliver on a deadline. She recommends beginners trace often, precisely because tracing small shapes teaches you what those shapes actually look like.

One practical bonus: because the photo was inserted as a private photo, it stays hidden when you export the time-lapse video of your portrait.

Where this goes next

What you have after this exercise is an outline with correct proportions, and that's exactly what it is: a first draft. In the full Portrait Academy, Freya dedicates separate draft and trace chapters to each feature, eyebrows, eyes, nose, lips, and hair, then covers inking with her Freya Inking Pen brushes and full coloring, including complete woman and man portraits from start to finish.

The free lesson on the Portrait Academy page shows her method in motion, so if you'd rather watch the circle-and-lines template come together than read it, start there. And when your first outline is done, share it and tag Freya, she genuinely loves seeing them. 💛