Drawing a human face is hard, but the nose? The nose is usually where everything falls apart. You’ve probably been there—you spend an hour getting the eyes perfect, the hair looks like actual silk, and then you draw two little dots and a couple of curved lines and suddenly your portrait looks like a generic emoji. It’s frustrating. Honestly, most people struggle with how to draw nose step by step because they try to draw the "lines" of the nose instead of the "volumes" of the nose.
Stop thinking about lines. The nose doesn't really have lines, except maybe where the nostrils meet the cheek. It’s all just light hitting a fleshy, cartilaginous protrusion. If you can wrap your head around that, your drawings will start looking three-dimensional almost immediately.
The Anatomy Most Artists Ignore
Before you even pick up a 2B pencil, you need to understand what's happening under the skin. We’re not talking about a medical degree here, but you should know about the nasal bone and the septal cartilage.
The top third of the nose is bone. It’s hard, fixed, and usually creates that bridge. The bottom two-thirds? That’s all cartilage. This is why the tip of the nose can wiggle while the bridge stays put. When you’re learning how to draw nose step by step, you have to account for that transition point. Often, there’s a slight bump or a change in direction where the bone ends and the cartilage begins. Master artists like Andrew Loomis—whose "Loomis Method" is still the gold standard for illustrators—always emphasized the "keystone" shape at the brow. This is the little wedge that connects the nose to the forehead. If you miss the keystone, the nose just looks like it was glued onto a flat mask.
It’s also worth looking at the work of Stephen Rogers Peck. In Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist, he breaks the nose down into five distinct planes: the top bridge, the two sides, and the two planes of the base (where the nostrils live). If you can see these planes, you can shade them. If you can shade them, you can draw a nose that actually has weight.
Start with the "Ball and Two Beans" Method
Forget the bridge for a second. Let's look at the tip.
Most beginners start from the top and work down. That’s a mistake. Instead, start with a large circle in the center of your paper. This represents the bulbous tip of the nose. Now, on either side of that circle, draw two smaller, slightly flattened ovals. Think of them like two little beans hugging the main ball. These are your alae, or the wings of the nostrils.
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- Draw the central circle (the tip).
- Add the two side ovals (the wings).
- Connect the top of the central circle to the brow line with two light, vertical lines.
These vertical lines shouldn't be straight like a ladder. They should taper slightly at the bridge and then widen out as they reach the brow. This "ball and beans" setup is the secret sauce. It gives you a framework that isn't rigid. You can make the central ball bigger for a bulbous nose or smaller and more angular for a "button" nose.
Defining the Under-Plane
This is the part where most people mess up. They draw the nostrils as dark, black holes. Don't do that. Unless you're looking directly up someone's nose with a flashlight, nostrils are rarely pure black. They are deep recesses of shadow.
The bottom of the nose is a plane that faces downward. Because it faces the ground, it usually catches less light than the bridge. You want to shade this entire bottom area—the bottom of the central ball and the side ovals—with a light, even tone. Stan Prokopenko, a legendary anatomy instructor, often teaches students to think of this as a "box" viewed from below. Once you have that shadow base, you can "cut" the nostril shapes into it using a darker value.
The shape of the nostril itself is kind of like a comma or a teardrop. It curves up into the wing and then tucks behind the septum (that middle bit of skin).
Shading: The Key to Realism
If you want to know how to draw nose step by step in a way that looks professional, you have to master the core shadow.
Imagine the light is coming from the top left. The right side of the nose is going to be in shadow. But it’s not just one big dark block. You’ll have a core shadow along the side of the bridge, a highlight on the very top of the bridge, and a "reflected light" area near the cheek.
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Reflected light is the secret weapon of the pros. Even on the shadow side of the nose, a little bit of light bounces off the cheek and hits the side of the nostril. If you leave a tiny sliver of lighter grey there, the nose will suddenly "pop" off the face. It creates depth. Without it, the nose looks like a flat sticker.
Use a soft eraser—like a kneaded eraser—to tap out a highlight on the tip of the nose and along the bridge. Don't rub. Just tap. You want a crisp highlight on the tip (where the skin is oily and reflective) and a softer, more diffused highlight on the bridge.
The Bridge and the Brow Connection
The bridge of the nose isn't a straight line. It has character. Depending on the person's ancestry or age, the bridge might be straight, concave (an "upturned" nose), or convex (an "aquiline" or hooked nose).
When you connect the nose to the eyes, remember the glabella. This is the smooth part of the forehead between the eyebrows. The nose bridge flows into the glabella in a way that looks like a "Y" or a "T" shape. If you draw the nose as a standalone object, it will look weird. It has to be integrated into the eye sockets. The shadow from the nose bridge often blends directly into the shadow of the upper eyelid.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
Look, we all make mistakes. But if you want to rank among the better artists, you need to watch out for these three specific "nose sins":
- The "L" Shape: Drawing the nose as a single "L" line from the side. It's too simple. The profile of a nose has at least four or five different direction changes.
- The Outline: Outlining the whole nose in a dark line. Noses are defined by value shifts, not outlines. If you must use a line, keep it very faint and only where there is a sharp change in plane.
- Symmetry Overload: Nobody has a perfectly symmetrical nose. A slight lean to one side or one nostril being a hair higher than the other actually makes the drawing look more human, not less.
Perspective and Angles
Everything changes when the head turns. In a three-quarter view, the bridge of the nose will actually obscure part of the far eye. This is called foreshortening.
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In this angle, one "wing" of the nose will look much wider than the other. The central "ball" will overlap the far nostril. You have to trust your eyes over your brain here. Your brain knows there are two nostrils, so it wants to draw both. But your eyes might only see one. Draw what you see, not what you know is there.
Actionable Next Steps for Practice
Reading about drawing is like reading about swimming—you won't get better until you actually get in the water. To truly master how to draw nose step by step, you need a high volume of sketches.
Start by filling a single page of your sketchbook with just the "ball and beans" construction. Don't worry about shading yet. Just do twenty of them from different angles. Look up high-resolution portrait photos on sites like Unsplash or Pinterest. Look for "harsh lighting" portraits; the shadows will be easier to identify.
Next, do a "value study." Take one of those constructions and try to render it using only three tones: the white of the paper for highlights, a mid-grey for the side planes, and a dark grey for the under-plane and nostrils.
Finally, try drawing a nose using a mirror. Your own face is the best reference because you can move your head and see how the shadows shift in real-time. Notice how the skin pulls near the nostrils when you flare them or how the bridge narrows when you squint.
The goal isn't perfection on the first try. It’s about building the muscle memory to see the nose as a 3D object rather than a 2D symbol. Keep your pencils sharp, but keep your eyes sharper. Artists like John Singer Sargent could suggest an entire nose with just three or four well-placed brushstrokes because they understood the underlying structure so deeply. You'll get there too. It just takes a few dozen "ugly" noses to get to the good ones.