Anatomy Quick Tips: Noses

A quick guide for random aspects of drawing the human nose. The anchor point of the face that holds everything together, this part of anatomy is all about subtlety.

Let me know what part of the human anatomy you would like to see more information on drawing! Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Feel free to check out my patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/sinix

And check out a trial of Corel Painter 2018 here: https://store.corel.com/1103/cookie?affiliate=41673&redirectto=http%3a%2f%2fwww.painterartist.com%2fus%2fproduct%2fpaint-program%2f&redirecthash=704B327597306567128DF7E24C4D2D31

♪ (Intro Music) ♪

Hey everyone, Sinix here!

It's time for some more anatomy quick tips

You guys have given me

a lot of good suggestions

on areas to cover

but I have decided to pick

the nose for this one

As always, I shall be going over

various topics that might

help you draw reasonable anatomy

from imagination.

It might not be quite as

thorough as some anatomy guides

but hopefully this method

keeps the important knowledge

stuck in your memory.

Alright, without any further nonsense

let's talk about the nose.

Starting off with structure,

of course we all have

a decent idea of

what a nose looks like.

From the side

it's basically just a triangle,

but we can divide this triangle

up into different sections

and just go over the terminology

I will be using in this video

The most important section in my opinion

is definitely the bulb

of the nose

it's a simple bulbous shape

but it melts its for form sublty

into every other aspect of the nose

Next we have the nostrils

which I will use to refer to

both the opening in the bottom

of the nose, and the structure that goes

around that opening

Last up, we have the bridge,

which is not always visible,

but it is important to at least understand

While the rest of the nose is made

of malleable cartilage

this is the one area

that is directly defined by

skeletal structure.

If I draw a little skull here on the side

we can see how the bridge fits into things

It's impossible to fully understand

the form from just one angle

so let's add in a front view

You might be wondering

why the nose is getting

wider towards the top, instead of narrower,

well, theres a couple of reasons,

namely because we want to make sure

that we represent the full

form of the structure

and not just the vertical ridge

along the front that catches the most light

This should help us be mindful

of all related planes of the face

that involve the nose,

I also just think it's helpful to

include these planes as

part of the nose structure

in order to escape drawing things

too iconicly

Lastly, it provides some good guidelines

for the placement of eyes and eye sockets

Be sure to also notice

that the nostril are flowing

off the bulb of the nose

and not extending lower or higher

than the bulb might naturally allow

From a bottom view, we can be reminded

that the nostrils also

flow into the overall curve

of the face, forming another

triangular shape when viewed

as a silhouette

It's not written down here, but

the septum of the nose

is also important,

that's the flesh between the two nostrils

and it's also worth remembering

that it flows from the bulb of the nose as well

Generally toward a lower point on the face

All of these forms really make

a diamond-like flow of planes away

from the tip of the nose

and speaking of diamonds,

you may once again notice

that I strongly favor angles over curves

when teaching anatomy

Some people like to approach noses

with circles instead and you can get away with it

but a perfect circle always feels less organic

I feel that the trick has always been

to learn good angles and apexes

and then work your way towards rounding shapes out

as you feel more and more comfortable with plains

but like with knuckles and other round features

I strongly recommend approaching the

bulbs on noses with broken diamond shapes

until you feel really good about

being able to construct noses from all angles.

Moving along, I should go over some

structural differences that occur in noses,

being able to draw different noses

is going to be the key to

preventing yourself from catching

a bad case of 'same face'.

Variations usually come from things such as;

bridge height, flatness, bulb size, and bulb height

the most neutral nose for myslef

might be one where the bulb of the nose

is directly in-front of the nostrils

and the bridge helps form a straight line between the bulb.

Another popular style for girly characters is to

flatten the bridge and have a small bulb that is pushed upwards slightly

I also love keeping that red line there in my mind,

and sometimes on the page,

it can be stylish at times.

Anyway, the next example has incredibly strong features,

the bridge is super pronounced,

and the bulb angles a bit lower than normal,

its worth stating that the nose should

also be cohesive with the rest of the face

if the skull has soft shapes and features

then the nose itself should also have soft shapes and vice versa

I think I should also include some examples of these

from the front, so I'll just toss those

in here at the bottom

I know for the first ones that i ignored the plains

on the side of the bridge but as long as

they're in our hearts - its fine

So, I think that should be enough structure talk

Let's move on

Next I'm going to talk a bit relationships

It's no use drawing a great nose

if you don't know where to put it

You can usually just place the nose

in a rectangle etching toward the lower side

but close to the center of the face.

There are also a lot of ways

we can relate the nose to the eyes

from a profile view, the sides of the nostrils

form a nice line that will flow up along

the cheek and into the eye socket

From the front, the sides of the nose

can we a nice indicator on where the eyeballs begin

More importantly, the center of the eyes

and bulb of the nose will form a nice little triangle

and the consistency and the shape of this triangle

can also become a huge factor

for getting different looking characters

to always be drawn consistently

When it comes to the other side of things,

the nose also relates strongly to the mouth

the philtrum is that groove that

runs between the septum and the upper lip

adding a good angle to the philtrum can

add a lot of style to your faces,

the sides of the mouth should

also relate to the sides of the nose

a small mouth might squeeze between the sides of the nose

but most mouths will probably be a little bit wider

depending on your taste

The nose is really a great anchor for all

other aspects of the face

If you start with the nose, you can always draw a great face

by working your way outward and

following the relationships

Of course, things don't always work out

as well as we want

so it's time to start going over

the most common mistakes I see

people make with noses.

Now, I can't prevent your questionable piercing decisions

but hopefully I can help you avoid

some simple drawing issues.

For starters,

make sure you don't hold the nostrils down too low

especially not any lower than the septum

it will start to look pretty weird

especially if you see it from a lower angle

often times, you can just place the

nostrils straight back from the apex of the bulb

the nostrils seem to be a source

of trouble for a lot of people

so try to avoid making them too round

or positioned in a way that removes

the bulb of the nose completely

As mentioned earlier in the video,

flow is everything

the bulb needs to flow in the nostrils and the septum

if the bulb doesn't flow

then chances are the nose will look terrible

Inorganic shapes also make it difficult to have good flow

assuming your forms and flow are solid,

the last thing you'll really need to watch out for

is putting in too many lines

always remember to draw

with a sense of lighting

if the bottom of the form has a dark line,

then the top of the form shouldn't have a dark line also,

Noses are a true testament to the saying

'less is more'

and since 'less is more', it's time to talk about reductions

Simplifying the nose isn't too troublsome

the form is already basic and relies heavily on subtlty

so the more you erase, the more stylized it becomes

The sides of the nose are almost always the first to go

for a lot of styles, a hint of the nostril openings

is all that will usually be left in the end

In the three fourths view,

we often just see one side of the bulb defined

with a single nostril opening on the other side

If you're good with your plains

then simplification and stylization should come naturally

A lot of stylization will also come from

how you make the nose flow into the rest of the face

I can demonstrate this best

by drawing a profile view of things

starting with the more realistic approach,

I can move into a slightly more stylized face

by rounding the features into each other a bit more

The bulb of the nose becomes more important

as the turning point for the full form

as things move into a heavily stylized look

this starts to resemble much more of an anime vibe

as the flow of the profile is streamlined even more

I think that is pretty much all

I had to say for reductions

Yeah, I think that's enough

It's finally time to start having fun with our noses

Okay, well, maybe not that much fun

but it's at least time to explore

what we learned about drawing random

noses from imagination

I shall do my best to get a nice mix

of noses from different angles

although to be honest

I definitely didn't include enough flat noses

or other interesting shapes now that I look back on it

but regardless,

once my nose collection is complete,

it's time to start adding color,

as usual, I'm going to colorize the line work first

into a deeper red tone for easier painting

you can do this by adding a lighting layer above the line work

and then just picking a good color

The next step is to get a good

mid-tone background that will compliment

the warm skin tones I'll be painting

and then I can just jump around

adding random skin colors for each of these noses

While you don't have to go all 'tumblery' with

the red noses and everything

it's still valuable to remember that

the skin on the nose can usually fall

into a more red-ish tone when compared

to more neutral parts of the skin

The bulb especially captures a lot of capillaries and sun damage

so it's a really good place

to throw in some hue variation

As I begin to paint out the line work

I am careful to make sure that the nostril openings

have some strong saturation

breaking away from any of the black tones

If I just use the pure black for the nostrils,

the painting would start to look a lot more lifeless

so any area of extreme darkness can

be eased into by including some heavy saturation

The bulb of the nose is spherical enough

that you will usually be able to place a

decent highlight somewhere on it

You can also make the skin feel extra smooth or oily

by simply making the highlight lean closer toward being specular

It might not look like a lot but painting this

many noses at once was a bit tiring

It was tough to keep thinking of different approaches to take at the time

so they're all a bit similar, sorry for that

but anyway,

anytime you have a rounded form such as a nostril

it does provide a good opportunity to

pop in a highlight on the skin directly beside it

so you might notice a lot of little highlights on the skin next to nostrils

Overall, I think this one near the bottom left is probably my favorite

it has a pretty good sense of colour to it

and I also feel like the values worked out pretty well

Alright, I tried to zoom through the painting process as fast as I can

and we're almost done with this episode

the only thing left to do is to tack on a silly little animation

I feel like any animation involving the nose

will probably wind up being slightly gross

but I'll try to do my best to contain myself

(Sneezes then sniffs)

Well, I guess I somewhat failed but close enough

Anyway, that is going to do it for this video

Hopefully this is your new favorite youtube video about drawing noses

and if it's not- well, I guess that's fine too

Thank you all so much for watching,

and feel free to recommend ideas

for future anatomy videos in the comments below

I would also like to give the biggest thank you to

everyone that is donating money

to support these videos via Patreon,

love you guys, see you everyone!