How to use the Figure Proportions Calculator
- Pick a proportion canon. Realistic adult · 7½ heads suits life drawing, Idealized suits classical figures, Heroic and Superhero suit comics, and the two fashion options match croquis templates. Below them are five child ages and two chibi sizes.
- Choose a build. Male, Female or Neutral changes the shoulder and hip widths. The landmark heights stay put, and before puberty all three builds share one set of widths.
- Say what you are measuring. With A real person, the height box fills in a typical height for the canon (175 cm for an adult man, 162 cm for a woman) and understands feet and inches such as 5‘9”. With A drawing, type how tall the figure is on your page, in cm, inches, mm or pixels.
- Read the diagram and the table. Each dashed line is a landmark, labeled with its position in heads and in your unit, measured down from the top of the head. The table adds the shoulder line, the fingertips, the distance up from the floor and the widths. Inch values also show the nearest sixteenth, so you can find them on a ruler.
- Compare and export. Compare side by side with draws a second canon at the same total height. Download PNG or Download SVG for a reference sheet, or Copy table to paste the numbers into your notes.
Why artists measure in heads
The head is the part you usually draw first, and you can measure it with a pencil held at arm’s length, so it makes a handy ruler that travels with the figure. An average adult stands about 7½ heads tall: a man of 175 cm (5 ft 9 in) has a head of roughly 23.3 cm from crown to chin. Real people vary by about half a head either way, so treat every number here as a convention for an upright figure seen straight on, not as a law of anatomy.
The 8-head figure taught in many twentieth-century drawing manuals is a gentle idealization chosen because its landmarks fall on whole numbers: chin at 1, nipples at 2, navel at 3, crotch at 4, just below the knees at 6, soles at 8. It reads as slightly taller and more elegant than life, and it is easy to remember when you have no reference.
The most useful single check is the halfway point. In an adult it falls at the crotch, the bottom of the pelvis. On a 175 cm figure that is 87.5 cm up from the floor whether you use the 7½, 8, 8½ or 9-head canon, because those canons shrink the head rather than stretch the legs. Fashion croquis break this rule on purpose: in the 9-head version the legs take 5 of the 9 heads, or 55.6% of the height.
The adult canons side by side
All values for a 175 cm figure, male build:
| Canon | Heads | One head | Crotch (heads down) | Knees | Shoulder width |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Realistic | 7½ | 23.3 cm | 3.75 | 5.63 | 2 heads = 46.7 cm |
| Idealized | 8 | 21.9 cm | 4 | 6 | 2 heads = 43.8 cm |
| Heroic | 8½ | 20.6 cm | 4.25 | 6.38 | 2⅓ heads = 48.0 cm |
| Superhero | 9 | 19.4 cm | 4.5 | 6.75 | 2½ heads = 48.6 cm |
| Fashion croquis | 9 | 19.4 cm | 4 | 6.5 | 2 heads = 38.9 cm |
| Fashion runway | 10 | 17.5 cm | 4.5 | 7.25 | 2.1 heads = 36.8 cm |
Read the last column in centimeters rather than heads. The heroic figure ends up physically broader than the realistic one, 48 cm against 46.7 cm, even though its head is smaller; that is what makes it look powerful. The fashion figures go the other way and get narrower, because all the extra length goes into the legs while the frame stays slim. Notice also that the chin-to-crotch distance is 3 heads in both the 8-head figure and the 9-head croquis. Fashion drawing adds its extra head below the hips.
Children are not small adults
A child’s head takes up a much larger share of the body. This tool draws a one-year-old about 4 heads tall, a three-year-old 5, a six-year-old 6, a ten-year-old 6¾ and a fifteen-year-old 7¼. Height nearly doubles between the first and tenth birthday (about 75 cm to 138 cm on US growth charts) while the head grows far less, and that difference is what pushes the head count up.
The halfway point travels too. On the 4-head toddler it sits at 2 heads, level with the navel, almost half a head above the crotch. At six it is 0.2 head above the crotch, and by about ten it has reached the crotch, where it stays for life. If a child you draw looks like a miniature adult, check this first: the legs are probably too long.
Stylized figures push the same idea further. A 3-head chibi keeps only a small body under a huge head, with the crotch at 2 heads and the knees half a head lower.
Tips from practice
Re-measure from the head you actually drew. Sketches drift. Once the head is on paper, measure it and work out the landmarks from that size, not from the size you intended. Type your figure’s total height in A drawing mode and the table does the division.
Check the halfway mark before any detail. A pencil line across the middle of the figure takes two seconds and catches the most common error, legs that are too short. Flipping the drawing in the Reference Flip & Grayscale Tool shows the same problem from a fresh angle.
Widths change with the build; heights barely do. The female build here keeps the same landmark heights but uses shoulders of 1.75 heads and hips of 1.65, against 2 and 1.5 for the male. At 162 cm that is a 37.8 cm shoulder line and 35.6 cm across the hips.
Foreshortening cancels every number here. These ratios hold for a standing figure seen from the front, side or back. Once a limb points toward you or the figure sits or bends, measure along the forms in your reference instead, and use the canon only to check lengths that stay parallel to the picture plane.