How to Draw a Nose With Step by Step Examples

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In this guide on how to draw a nose. I will go over the basic anatomy (don´t worry only the most important parts) of the human nose, different shapes of the nose and a step by step drawing example. So let´s start learning.

What tools do I need for this tutorial?

You will only need some drawing paper, any decent one will do, a pencil, I used a 6B but from HB to 7B any pencil will be fine, and finally you will need an eraser. I recommend a kneadable eraser because its much cleaner than a regular one but you can use a regular one as well.

The anatomy of the Human Nose

To understand where the nose is attached to the skull we will start by looking at the human skull from the side view.

How to draw a Nose side view skull

The Nose will begin right at the appropriately named “nasal bone”. The Nose is composed largely of cartilages.

The first cartilage, that we will look at, is called the “upper lateral cartilage” (Green in the Picture below). The “upper lateral cartilage” is attached to the “nasal bone” and it has the shape of a rectangle with very round corners.

The “upper lateral cartilage” runs down the middle of the nose all the way to the beginning of the tip of the nose. The nose tip is made up of the “lower lateral cartilage”(Dark blue in the picture below).

This cartilage goes down and attaches back to the skull. The “lower lateral cartilage” is also responsible for one half of the shape of the nostrils.

The Nose wing (light blue in the picture below) attaches to the “lower lateral cartilage” and attaches back to the skin on the skull. The nose wing will complete the form of the nostrils.

How to draw a nose Skull side view

The last part is not cartilage but a muscle.

It is called the Nasalis Transverse. This muscle attaches to the middle of the nose at the top side of the “upper lateral cartilage” and runs down the side of the skull. This muscle dominates the look of the side of the nose.

These are not all the parts and muscles of the nose but as long as you only want to draw the nose, this is all you need to know.

We only looked at the side view of the nose though but if we take a look at the front view we will see, that all the cartilages and the muscle are present on both sides of the nose.

Almost perfectly mirrored. When you draw the Nose from the front or a 3/4 angle you should keep this in mind.

Now, that we know the most basic anatomy of the human nose, we can proceed to draw a nose in front view.

Let´s Draw a Nose in Front View – Step by step

Step 1: Let´s Draw the Guidelines

Firstly just draw a straight vertical line and then two horizontal lines to roughly sketch out the dimensions of the nose.

Only draw these lines very light, as they will be erased later on.

This weird looking rectangle is our placeholder for the nose.

Step 2: Establishing the Rough Shape of the Nose

Next up we will determine where the tip of the nose will be. To do that we draw a little circle at the bottom of the lower horizontal line.

And then we draw a wavy line under that circle to define the shape of the nose and the nostrils.

Under the little circle, we will ad an elongated v-shaped line for the bottom of the nose.

Step 3: Drawing the Nostrils.

Now we will draw the nose wings and define the core shadow of the by erasing some of the guidelines.

Let’s erase some of the guidelines, that we don´t need anymore.

And then we will draw in a general shadow shape underneath the nose that we will shade in later on.

Step 4: Let´s Start Shading!

In this step, we will shade in the core shadows and define where the drop shadow of the nose will be.

The light in this example will come from the top right.

Now we will shade in the shadow area, that we established in the step before.

Step 5: Establishing the Drop Shadow of the Nose

In this step we will shade in the drop shadow. The drop shadow is a little darker than the core shadow.

Step 6: And Finally We Will Add Some Details to Our Nose Drawing

Finally we will add some shading to the side of the nose. Remember the anatomy of the nose and try to imagine where the light will hit and where shadow will be. Don’t go too dark with the shading.

And with this, we are done! don’t get discouraged, if you are struggling.

Just keep on drawing and learning and you will become better very quickly.

Now, that you have drawn the nose you can also draw in some eyes if you want to. I have written a guide on drawing the human eyes, that you can check out if you want to.

How to Draw the Nose From any Angle?

When you want to draw the nose from several angles from your imagination, then you will have to learn the anatomy of the nose und get comfortable with it.

Get used to the shapes of the different cartridges and the muscles and exercise to draw them from any angle. Here are some examples.

If you just focus on the general shapes of the nose then you can draw it from a lot of different angles. Copying the drawings above and below and then trying to draw the nose in angles that you invent.

If you do practise sheets like these you will learn how to draw noses in no time!

If you want to learn how to draw anatomy of the human body then check out my guides on drawing the human torso and the anatomy of the human arm.

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