When drawing the head it's important first to master drawing each of it's parts(eyes, mouth etc.). It's also important to learn the proportions and the placement of each element of the face. That's what we'll going to learn in this section. The shape of the face is relatively simple, but the difficult thing is to place each element of the face so, that at the end it'll look good. But lets think first of the easy things to draw. I'll start with the face shape. Remember when drawing manga, there aren't difficult rules of geometry. Face positions can be classified into three:
             front view
             3/4 view
             side view

        1Drawing the face shape from front view
The nearly most important thing on a face is the chin. It has got some special ways of drawing. I'll explain it on the example of Rei Hino chan, here we've got a good picture of her face.

(I know she looks kind of impressed looking at us, but this picture will serve our school needs) As you can see on this picture, the chin has got three major axis points(they can vary in position on different characters, but they're alway present). As following the chinline up it slowly becomes a line representing the edges of the head. Lets call this line the major face line. It goes as this: As I already metioned above, there are three major axis points. These points define the legth of the face. They're here: You'll have to be careful because, the angular variances in these bends are often hard to see until the picture is done. It happens often that when you look at your picture when you draw it, it looks to you "o.k.", but when you look at it when you've finished it you see that the face of the character is completely deformed(one face half has a different shape than the other half). In order not to let this happen draw the lines first smoothly, then stand up from your table walk a bit round(to clear your mind) and then look the picture again and correct the errors(you can see them now far easier). Concider your character hasn't got hair, then the face line would go as follows: Now we'll think about the placement of the mouth. The mouth position isn't clearly defined as may somebody think(of course it can not be on the ear, so don't even think about such things!).
It's clear that it'll have to be on the central face line that splits the face verticaly. You can see it here. So we've defined the horizontal position of the mouth , but how to define the vertical position? Well, there isn't a rule where it should be as I've already mentioned. It's depending only on you, but I'll help you a bit to find the right place for your characters mouth. First we'll have to choose what kind of character we're drawing. The mouth is often a mirror for the characters age. The higher the mouth the younger the character. The limit is the nose. Little babies have the mouth right under the nose, while old grandmas and grandpas have the mouth much lower(this is, as they say, caused by all their tons of experiences in life, blah, blah, blah ...). Also note that, old peole's mouths are bigger than those of children(look at Hotaru chan from Sailormoon when she was reborn). I know this all doesn't help realy you simply have to find out yourself.
Lets get to the nose. It is the thing you often don't spot easily in a manga face. But why am I writing about things you already know. The placement of the nose is relatively simple when you've drawn the rest of the face, but the nose is often use as some kind of central point of the face from where you define the postion of the other elements. Infact it's realy in the center of the face, both horizontaly and verticaly. But as an example I'll write some other position information you'll need when drawing it, for example: the nose is in the middle of the eyes a bit lower than the bottom eye line. Now the positions are: in the height of the bottom end of the ears, but a bit above the mouth wich is in the height of the left and right bend of the major face line. Here you can see those positons. Here is also a rule about the age. The higher the age the bigger the nose, but I think you know that already.
Now that we got through the front view, we can go on to the 3/4 view. Here I've chosen another picture of a sailormoon character- Mamoru Chiba san. (I've got to mention that this picture isn't mine)
Here are also some very important parts. First of all it's the major face line. It goes like this: The line has got some important curves. The hardness of these curves often defines the sex of a character. Here they are displayed: Also be careful when drawing them, because it could lead to the same errors as when drawing the face from front view. Now to the face elements. First we'll draw the nose as an element from where we'll define the position of the other face elements. The nose is placed on the face center line, here you can see it: Now drawing the eyes. We've learned how to draw them from 3/4 view now to their position in the face. They are placed between the upper two curves of the face. The horizontal blue lines define teh vertical placement limits. The position of the mouth is even simpler. I'll show you a range of position and you'll have to chose the right one yourself. The ear position is on top of the left(or right, depending from which side we look) end of the major face line.
O.k. guys, the only thing left to learn is to draw the face from side view. Now here we've got a nice face of Usagi Tsukino chan drawn from side view. First of all we'll designate the major face line. Right now you can see that we're going to have some problems drawing the head from side view, because we're going to use another method. The reason? The nose is part of the face line and the forehead will do some problems. Also be careful not to get the proportional ratios of each face part wrong. This could result in some kind of horse face. If you got the face line right we can continue by putting the eyes into the face. But before we realy put the eyes in, we'll have to define where they should be.
Yo, so here are the ranges: If you want your manga to look good you shouldn't draw the eyes higher or lower than these lines. Now that we know where to put the eyes on the vertical axis we'll have to define where to put them on the horizontal axis. O.k. lets place the mouth somewhere. To know exactly where you can see on this picture. But there are some small problems with mouth. I define the height of the mouth by two differentf factors:
       the age of the character
       the mood of the character
The age rule we already know and the mood rule is: the better the mood the higher the mouth. But the problem is which to use?
Well that's depending only on you. Also a problem is the ear placement. Hmm, yo! There isn't a rule for the side view at all! Just look at the picture of Usagi chan and you'll know.
But remember when practicing :
         - draw the lines first smoothly the when you're sure they're fine draw the harder
         - be patient with your skills, just be patient!

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