Revisiting the divided-up Front View of the face


Understanding the front view facial divisions

Just for fun we're going to break the front view into four  quarters.

Reading down the left side of Mr. Average: On the left side of the illustration you see "Total Head". The size of the Total Head is equal to 1.

  • The "1/4" mark is just a line through the horizontal half way point of the upper half of the head.  It's half way between the middle of the eye line and the top of the head line. It mars off 1/4th the the distance from the top of the head to the bottom of the chin.

  • The "1/2" mark is of course the middle of the eye line. It splits the face (actually  the front view of the head), in half. 

  • The "3/4" mark  marks the dividing point between the upper and lower halves of the lower half of the face. The lower half of the face is is everything below the middle of the eye line. It's also 3/4ths the distance down the face from the top of the head line. 

  • The "3/4" mark also marks the placement of the bottom of the nose line in the old way of looking at the face. We now slide the actual bottom of the nose line up a fraction (to 2/5ths the way down the lower half of the face).  But we still note the placement of the old bottom of the nose line because it's right at the 3/4 mark. (I know, I'm getting ridiculous here.) 

  • The arrow pointing down from the bottom of the nose line points down to the bottom of the face. This is the inferred 4/4ths or the "1 unit" line or what we also call the "bottom of the chin line".

Why hang on to this old remnant? (Like the old bottom of the nose line.) Because the Mr. Average  face splits up very nicely into thirds  between the old bottom of the nose line (at the 3/4 marker) and the bottom of the chin line...and it's easy to remember.    




The middle of the mouth line
1/3rd the way down

So let's look at the divisions of the last fourth of the face, the bottom fourth of the face - that is, everything between  the 3/4 marker and the bottom of the chin line. We'll focus now on the markers at the bottom right of the picture. (Hang with me folks, you're going to get this! :-)

  • The "0/3" or "zero thirds" line is at the exact same place as the 3/4 marker (on the left): at the old bottom of the nose line. That you can see in the picture just above. Two names for the same line. 

  • The "1/3" mark shows the middle of the mouth line. (Hey, now we're getting some where!). Got that? The 1/3 mark marks off the placement for the middle of the mouth line

  • NEW: The "2/3" mark is the top of the chin line and the "3/3" line is the bottom of the chin line. We got through it! Hooray! (I'm taking a break.)



Finding a home for the chin

  • So the chin fits right there in between the 2/3rd's line (the top of the chin line), and the 3/3rds or bottom of the chin line