Nobody Nose

I'm a sucker for a good pun, I guess.

This is a post about drawing noses. Because it is not an easy thing to do. And yet, also, quite easy. I dunno how to say that in a way that sounds smart. Let's just look at some examples of artists drawing noses, then look at how I draw them. Because I'm gonna predict that I do not have a consistent way of doing it. Which... is fine, I think. Art is feels, not accuracy.

Most artists tend to draw female noses differently than male ones. I guess because they want to ladies to have "pretty" noses, so they reign in their wilder cartooning habits for something more modest.

Here's a bit of Sergio Aragonés. I thought this was a nice little capsule of noses. See how each character has a completely different looking nose? Aragonés is a master of cartooning and he really tries to give each character a look of their own. Notice how Groo's granny here has a nose just like Groo's.

But when Aragonés wants to draw the pretty girls, he switches gears too.

Abe Snake, artist of the adult comic Muffin Topp, draws very cute little noses on his ladies too, often just a curved line pointing up.

But here are some male characters from Muffin Topp.

Comic artist Rune Ryberg opts for a little curved line pointing down on many of his females.

Here's a scene from a Ryberg comic showing men and women together. The female noses are slightly smaller, on average, but the size difference here is not very noticeable.

Vaughn Bodé liked to suggest a female nose, often in different ways. There are far fewer examples of his male noses on human characters because so many of his characters are lizards, robots, and weirdos.

And here are a few other artists working in styles that I like.

The classic pinup style female nose is small, usually upturned, and just not very prominent. It is there, but not dominant.

Yet many women have big honkers. What about cartoonists who draw more prominent noses on their women as well as their men? Now, I think in the above example you can see that William Skaar's treatment of noses on his female characters is kinda cool and interesting. He doesn't give them tiny, upturned noses. Their honkers are more pronounced. I like that. It's a different vibe.

An assortment of cartoonists leads to an assortment of noses.

Noses can be almost any shape. No wait, fuck that. Noses can be any shape. Whatever you want to draw. If you want to draw a ridiculous little square for every nose on every character, you can do that. Because this is art. There are no rules.

Yet we don't just draw squares for noses, usually. We want to express something. And it won't always be satisfied with a little square. We experiment, doodle, and screw around with it until we draw a nose we think looks about right. Then maybe we draw a lot of noses like that as we move forward into our journey.

Here are some noses from my own art. I don't have a standard style for noses. I go with what feels right. My noses have changed over the years, though. I used to try to draw them realistically when I was young, then I shifted to something more cartoony. I'm still searching for noses.