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Master Six Head Planes with Short Drills That Build Realistic Skin

September 24, 2026
Master Six Head Planes with Short Drills That Build Realistic Skin

The planes of the head are simplified flat surfaces artists use to construct facial form, align features in perspective, and predict where light and shadow fall. The most widely taught version comes from John Asaro's planar head model, which treats the face as directional surfaces rather than literal anatomy. Learn these six or seven core planes, and you'll start seeing structure instead of just outlines.

TL;DR:

  • The head's planes consist of six to seven major surface groups, including the front, brow, temple, nose, cheek, and jaw planes, which vary with angle and individual features.
  • Beginners often mistake hard contours for planes, so practicing value-only thumbnails and soft shading is essential to accurately interpret surface turns.
  • Repeated drills involving quick sketches and rotating 3D models improve the ability to read and predict how planes shift with different angles and expressions.
  • The planes are based on real bone and muscle landmarks, meaning their proportions and sharpness change with each person's unique face shape and features.
  • Using the planes as a structured observation tool helps avoid common mistakes like over-outline and supports accurate, three-dimensional portrait construction.
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Table of Contents

What Are the Planes of the Head, and Where Did the Model Come From?

You've probably seen that faceted, almost crystalline head sculpture in art school hallways or drawing tutorials. That's the Asaro head, and it's been teaching artists to see structure since 1976. John Asaro built the model to solve a specific problem: beginners tend to draw what they think a face looks like instead of what light and form actually reveal.

The planar approach doesn't stand alone. It works alongside Andrew Loomis's head construction method, which gives you the sphere, centerline, and proportional guidelines to place features correctly. Vilppu's planar studies, often taught through rotating 3D models, push the concept further by breaking the head into layered levels of complexity. Think of it this way: Loomis tells you where things go, Asaro tells you how the surface turns, and Vilppu shows you how those turns hold up from every angle.

Here's what each contributes to your toolkit:

  • Loomis method: Establishes proportion, the centerline, and feature placement using a sphere and jaw wedge.
  • Asaro planes: Breaks the surface into flat, directional facets that respond predictably to light.
  • Vilppu planes: Layers additional detail on top of the basic planes for more nuanced form study.

None of these models is the final answer. Every real head varies from the diagram, so you're using the planes to organize what you observe, not to replace your eyes.

What Are the Key Planes of the Head, and How Do You Spot Them?

Six major plane groups show up on nearly every reference photo or live model you study. Once you can name them, you'll start seeing them automatically, even in three-quarter or profile views where they're easy to miss.

  1. Front plane of the face: A vertical band running down the center from forehead to chin, roughly bounded by the temples on either side. This plane faces most directly toward the viewer and typically catches the strongest light.
  2. Brow and forehead plane: The forehead itself is flatter and tips backward as it approaches the hairline, while the brow ridge juts forward and creates a distinct shadow shelf beneath it.
  3. Temple or side plane: Where the forehead turns sharply away from the front plane toward the ear. This is one of the most dramatic value shifts on the whole head.
  4. Nose planes: The bridge, the two side planes, and the underside (including the "keystone" area where the nose meets the cheek) divide into at least four distinct facets.
  5. Cheek planes: Bordered by the nose planes on one side and the jaw on the other, these shift value depending on the cheekbone's projection and the light source.
  6. Jaw and chin planes: The jaw plane sweeps from the chin back toward the masseter muscle near the ear, while the chin itself often reads as its own small front-facing plane.

Beginners often assume plane count is fixed, but the Asaro planar model actually varies its facet count depending on the viewing angle and level of detail you're working toward. A quick way to check your grasp: in a front view, the temple planes barely show. Rotate to three-quarter, and suddenly the near-side temple and jaw planes dominate the silhouette. In full profile, you're mostly reading the front plane's edge against the side plane.

How Do You Use the Planes to Block In a Head and Predict Shadow?

Blocking in a head with planes in mind follows a repeatable sequence, and it works whether you're sketching from a live model or working from a photo reference.

  1. Start with basic Loomis-style blocking. Draw the cranial sphere, add the centerline, and mark off vertical thirds for the hairline, brow, and chin. This gives you the skeleton the planes will hang on.
  2. Carve in the side plane cuts. Flatten the sides of the sphere where the temple turns and where the jaw wedge attaches. This single step is what separates a flat, generic oval from a head that reads as three-dimensional.
  3. Map the major planes over the block-in. Lightly indicate the front plane, brow shelf, cheek planes, nose planes, and jaw plane using thin construction lines.
  4. Pick a light direction and assign three or four broad values. Don't render every plane separately yet. Group them into light, mid-tone, shadow, and core shadow, then place each plane into one of those buckets based on its angle to your light source.
  5. Soften or hold edges based on real anatomy. Some transitions, like the brow shelf, stay crisp. Others, like the cheek-to-jaw transition, need softening once your basic values are in place.
  6. Check feature alignment against your centerline and thirds. If an eye or the corner of the mouth drifts off its horizontal guide as the head turns, your perspective is off, not your anatomy.

Pro Tip: Squint at your reference photo until details disappear and you can only see three or four value groups. That's exactly how many value zones you should be placing on your drawing before you touch fine detail.

The single most common failure point here is treating every plane edge as a hard, black contour line. Planes are about value relationships first. The line work comes later, if at all.

What Mistakes Do Beginners Make With the Planes of the Head?

The biggest trap is turning the Asaro model into a coloring-book outline. You draw every facet edge as a hard line, and the portrait ends up looking like a low-poly video game character instead of a person.

  • Overdrawing polygon edges: Fix this by doing value-only studies with a blending stump or your finger, no outlines at all.
  • Ignoring the centerline on turned heads: Recheck your centerline and axis lines constantly on three-quarter views. If they don't curve naturally around the block-in, your planes will misalign too.
  • Copying diagrams instead of observing: Swap line-first habits for quick value thumbnails that force you to read the actual reference instead of a memorized template.

Pro Tip: If you catch yourself outlining a plane before you've decided its value, stop and switch to a soft graphite stick. Blocking in tone first prevents the faceted look almost entirely.

What Practice Exercises Actually Build Plane-Reading Skill?

Short, repeated drills beat long, occasional sessions for this particular skill. The goal is training your eye to sort a face into a handful of value groups fast.

  1. Five-minute plane thumbnails. Sketch the same head from front, three-quarter, and profile, labeling only the dominant plane in each zone. No detail, no shading gradients.
  2. Twenty-minute block-in from a photo or the Asaro model. Focus entirely on values, not features. Use the layered NMA and Vilppu planes models if you want a rotating reference that shows the same head at increasing levels of detail.
  3. Rotate a 3D model or mannequin head. Study how planes shift and disappear as the angle changes, especially around the temple and jaw.
  4. Repeat daily for at least two weeks. This is a recalibration exercise. Your eye needs repetition to stop defaulting to line-based habits.

Progress from thumbnails to full block-ins, then to refined renderings only once your value thumbnails consistently match your reference within a couple of steps.

What Anatomical Landmarks Actually Define Each Plane?

Every plane boundary corresponds to a real structure under the skin, which is why the model holds up across different faces even though it's a simplification.

The brow ridge (the bony arch above each eye) creates the shelf separating the forehead plane from the eye socket plane below it. The zygomatic arch, or cheekbone, marks where the cheek plane begins its outward projection and where it eventually turns into the temple plane. The nasal bone and cartilage define the bridge and side planes of the nose, while the piriform aperture, the opening at the base of the nasal structure, creates the underside plane and the keystone shape where nose meets cheek.

Lower on the face, the masseter muscle, which bulges near the back corners of the jaw when someone clenches their teeth, defines where the jaw plane turns toward the ear. The mandible itself, the jawbone, sets the hard angle between the front-facing chin plane and the side-facing jaw plane. The temporal bone and temporalis muscle create the flattened side plane of the skull above and in front of the ear.

None of this means you need a full anatomy course before you draw a plane diagram. It means the planes aren't arbitrary shapes someone invented for convenience. They track real bone and muscle landmarks, which is exactly why the same six or seven plane groups keep showing up no matter whose face you're studying.

What Anatomical Landmarks Actually Define Each Plane? — overview diagram

How Do Head Planes Vary Across Different Face Shapes and Backgrounds?

The plane groups stay consistent, but their proportions and sharpness shift a lot depending on individual bone structure, and that variation is exactly what separates a generic drawing from a specific likeness.

A person with a prominent brow ridge and deep-set eyes will show a much sharper shadow shelf under the forehead plane than someone with a flatter brow. Wider cheekbones push the cheek plane outward and create a more visible turn into the temple, while narrower cheekbones blend the front and side planes more gradually. Jaw width and the angle of the mandible change how abrupt or gentle the transition is between the front-facing chin plane and the side-facing jaw plane.

Nose structure varies even more dramatically. A narrow, high-bridged nose creates tight, well-defined side planes and a small top plane, while a broader or flatter nose spreads that value information across a wider, softer area with less contrast between planes. None of these differences break the model. They just mean the same six plane groups get wider, narrower, sharper, or softer depending on the person in front of you.

This is the exact point where the Asaro model's own teaching premise matters most: the planes exist to organize your observation, not to hand you a template that fits every face identically. Use the plane groups as a checklist of where to look, then let the specific proportions of your subject dictate how each plane actually behaves. Skipping this step is how you end up with portraits that technically follow the diagram but don't look like the person you drew them from.

How Do Facial Expressions Change the Planes of the Head?

A neutral, relaxed face shows the cleanest version of the plane model, which is exactly why most reference diagrams use one. Expressions complicate things fast, because muscle contraction shifts the soft tissue sitting on top of the bone structure the planes are built from.

A smile pulls the cheek plane upward and compresses it, often creating a new fold or plane break beside the nose that doesn't exist at rest. Raised eyebrows push the forehead plane into temporary horizontal creases, adding small transitional planes across a surface that's normally one continuous turn. A furrowed brow does the opposite: it compresses the brow shelf downward and adds sharp, localized shadow shapes between the eyes that aren't part of the standard model at all.

Jaw movement, whether from talking, laughing, or turning the head, shifts the masseter plane's prominence and can momentarily flatten or exaggerate the jaw-to-neck transition. Even a slight head tilt changes which planes catch the light source and which fall into shadow, without any expression at all.

The practical takeaway is straightforward: treat the standard plane model as your baseline for a resting face, then watch for where expression pushes tissue away from that baseline. You're not discarding the planes when you draw an expression. You're layering temporary, muscle-driven changes on top of the same underlying structure.

How Do Facial Expressions Change the Planes of the Head? — overview diagram

Brittany's Approach to Teaching Head Planes

Plane study only sticks when it connects directly to the next skill you're building, which is why the drills in this guide aren't meant to live in isolation. Blocking in planes and predicting values sets up everything that comes after: laying in graphite, building texture, and rendering skin so it reads as living tissue rather than flat tone. These lessons follow a stepwise logic, moving from broad structural decisions to the fine shading work that makes a portrait feel real.

— Brittany

Ready to Turn Plane Practice Into a Finished Portrait?

Most tutorials stop at the diagram and leave you guessing how to turn six flat planes into skin that actually looks alive. Structured, step-by-step lessons are available that focus on simplifying skin texture once your block-in and values are solid.

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If you've been working through the plane drills above, the natural next step is the 12-page skin texture eBook, which takes the value groups you just practiced and shows you how to layer graphite into realistic texture on top of them. For a broader course that walks through full head construction from blocking to finished rendering, the step-by-step lesson hub covers the entire progression in order. Prefer something you can print and keep beside your sketchbook? The downloadable guides give you quick reference sheets for exactly this kind of plane and proportion work. Browse the full catalog of digital downloads to find the tutorial that matches where you are right now, and start turning today's plane diagram into tomorrow's finished portrait.

Where to Learn More About Head Planes

For deeper study, visit the original Asaro head model site for background and the Asaro planes manual for detailed plane breakdowns. Sharpened Artist's Loomis-based lesson and New Masters Academy's layered planes models round out a solid self-study path.

Sources

FAQ

What Is the Asaro Head Model Used For?

The Asaro head is a teaching tool that simplifies the human head into flat, directional planes to help artists understand form, perspective, and light behavior. John Asaro developed it as a teaching aid available since 1976, and it's meant as a starting point, not a literal map of anatomy.

How Many Planes Does the Head Have?

Most versions of the model identify six to seven major plane groups: the front facial plane, brow and forehead, temple or side plane, nose planes, cheek planes, and jaw and chin planes. The exact facet count can vary depending on how detailed the specific planar model you're studying is.

Do the Loomis Method and the Asaro Planes Work Together?

Yes. The Loomis method establishes proportion and feature placement using a sphere and centerline, while the Asaro planes describe how the surface turns and catches light within that structure. Most structured lesson sequences teach them as complementary steps in the same block-in process.

What's the Most Common Mistake When Drawing Head Planes?

Treating every plane boundary as a hard outline is the most frequent error, which makes portraits look faceted instead of three-dimensional. Practicing value-only thumbnails without any line work is the fastest way to break that habit.

Where Can I Practice Plane-Based Drawing Skills?

Brittanyclareart's step-by-step lessons build directly on plane and value fundamentals before moving into detailed skin rendering. Pricing for individual tutorials and guides is listed on the digital downloads page.