How To Sketch a Human Ear

Lester West

Introduction

In today’s blog we are talking about ear sketching tutorial, did you “hear” that?  We’ll dig into a three steps ear tutorial on how to sketch an ear and the placement of the ear using the Loomis method, as illustrated briefly in my first blog (The Loomis Method: The Foundation I Use for Portrait Sketching).  I’ll talk briefly about some interesting make-up of the anatomical ear.  And at the end of the blog, I will show you how I sketch various angles of the ear as seen in the featured image above.

If you’ve ever tried to draw a person and felt the ear was oddly tricky, you’re not alone… they are.  There are so many different ears out there but basically, however they all have the same components.  All ears have what’s called the helix (or what I would call the outside part of the ear (or the outline)).  The next anatomical definition of the ear component is called antihelix.  Which is inside the outline where you can imagine a “y” in the upper part of the ear.  The next component that is of interest to artists, is the concha or the bowl (like a kitchen sink and on the bottom is the drain) that sits in the middle of the ear. And the next part we are going to reference as artists is the lobe, which is where we would find an earring sitting.