There are a lot of different planes on the human skull so if you can imagine a stage with a curtain at the front and another curtain a metre or two behind this and then another curtain behind that and finally the backdrop at the back of the stage you can get a better understanding of receding planes.

The maxilla comes out to us aswell as the nose and teeth so these can be the front plane (Front curtain) The zygomatic bone recedes away from the maxilla so this is like a curtain further back from the front curtain. The eyes and eye sockets go back still further so this is the next curtain and finally the frontal bone recedes toward the back of the head and so this can be the backdrop. The rough sketch in the example indicates diagonal shading from right to left and this is one way to describe the tone of receding planes. The darkest and lightest tones should be closest to us like the chin, teeth and nose, all other receding tones need to fade off.

The front of the face from the chin to the forehead isn't a flat plane, certain parts of it recede. Here the head turns away from us and now we get the feeling of three dimensions and it is this three dimensional quality that we have to get down onto paper. Bytheway can you see how much more interesting this sketch is to the full head on view, that is because we can see more planes of the face and different angles making it more interesting so when we do a portrait it is best to draw a head at this angle rather than straight on, it always gives more character.

We can get these planes down onto paper through shading, either diagonal shading from right to left or through directional shading which is following the form of the facial structure with our pencil strokes. If a certain form looks as though it is round or straight we follow this with our pencil strokes by making descriptive lines. The sketch in the example indicates this by describing the form with directional lines.
 

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