I can't count how many times over the years I've heard people say that human ears are really complicated and super hard to draw. And they are pretty weird looking things. All the curves and planes can be especially challenging when viewed from certain angles (The one that gets me every time is when you're mostly seeing an ear from behind. Like man, what is that weird flappy bastard).
Anyway. In most of the art I see on Tumblr, ears are drawn from the side (when your faves are smooching, am I right?), at a three-quarters angle, or from the front. Front views can vary a lot depending on how much someone's ears stick out from their head, but side views are more or less the same across the board.
Sooo, I wanted to share a really simple formula of sorts for drawing ears from the side. And if you want to depict an ear from a different angle, I think these basic lines can still be useful—along with photo references, a mirror, or selfie mode on your phone.
Here ya go:
It doesn't matter in what order you draw the lines, but I recommend doing the outermost one first. And from those three simple lines, you can work out a rough sketch with some suggestions of depth and shading:
Of course, some people's earlobes attach differently, so you don't get the little curl at the bottom, and there's infinite variation in the specific shapes, but that's the gist.
I hope it's helpful! If anyone tries it out, tag me so I can see :)
Hi and welcome back to another art advice post where I try and pretend I know what I'm talking about when it comes to art lol...
And the time has finally come for me to finally face my biggest fear: drawing the human ear.
This is gonna be me trying to offer advice to any artist (beginner or established) who struggles with drawing ears like I do so hopefully some of y'all will find this useful lol!
Will start by saying this is an unofficial sequel to this post from 2021 where I talked about how to draw a very basic face, but didn't include a lot of information on how to draw ears pfft...
Like with much of art, the key is always going to be 'look at references and draw them' lol but this wouldn't be much of an advice post if I just told you that, so let's go into a little more detail about how you can get good at drawing ears lol!
Ears are a complicated series of shapes, and obviously it doesn't help that everyone's ears are often drastically different! They also have layered parts to them that other facial features don't, so it's even more difficult to create a sense of its 3D quality in a 2D space (as in, by drawing/painting it).
First: start with the basic shape of the entire ear. This of course changes depending on the angle your drawing, but for this post I'll focus on a side profile clear view of the ear!
Above is my own ear that I'll use as a reference to explain some of this stuff!
First we need to establish the external shape of the ear.
As I've said already, this does differ from person to person, but generally try and remember that an ear is often made up of 3 curves.
(A lil note here: I'm not gonna use technical terminology here because a) i don't know it & 2) I feel others probably also don't know the technical names for parts of the ear so it would just get confusing for all of us pfft...)
You first want to draw the top part of the ear, and the largest curve, followed by a shallower curve for the 2nd section and finishing with the final curve to create the lobe. Remembering this can also help in drawing ears from other angles, by the way!
I next draw the outlines for the internal parts of the ear.
You do this by following the shape of external part of the ear, remembering how everything basically curves together smoothly. This is definitely where I've gone wrong before in making every individual section separate from each other!
I've colour coded the above image in a way that hopefully makes it easier to see the two distinct 'sections' of the raised inner parts of the ear. It's these distinct shapes that I try and keep in mind when I'm drawing ears.
Obviously one of the most recognisable parts of the ear is the central hole shape, which is technically made up of 2 sections too. The yellow section kinda resembles a 3 shape, so that might be a good way to remember it when you come to drawing this part!
This is also a good point to go into how to fill in the shadow parts, because as you can see in the reference there are different sections that require darker shadow than others.
In the above image I've used blue to show where the deepest shadows go and yellow where the softer ones go to create a 3D quality to it! You might notice how I continue the yellow beyond the ear itself, and this is because I always find it useful to try and remember how the ear connects to the rest of the head.
And that's about it!
Here's a very rough quick sketch of an ear I did using the stuff I just mentioned! It's definitely not perfect, and I'll be the first to admit I still struggle a lot with drawing ears, but I hope this lil post was somehow useful in breaking down some of the more confusing elements of the human ear!
Let me know if you're interested in another ear related post with me going over drawing ears from a front perspective (although a lot of my advice would be very similar on that lol)!
I looked at my ears this morning and they looked out of place or fake, as if they weren't a part of my body. I stared at them for so long that I freaked myself out and had to cover them with my hair.
How am I suppose to draw realistic ears when my own look fake ...
