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  • Hi, I'm Steve Huston, and I'm excited today to bring you a free head drawing lesson. Over

  • three hours of content. this is part of much bigger series, over 15 hours of content. You

  • can find the whole series at www.NewMastersAcademy.org.

  • I hope you'll check that out. But for now,

  • let's get to it and try and draw the head with basic construction and good confidence.

  • This is my basic head structure class. I’m going to show you the basic drawing structure

  • for the head. All the major planes, the major shapes, how the features set in terms of construction

  • lines. Well get that basic information down. Well do some assignments where youll

  • draw a little bit with those ideas. I’ll draw a little bit with those ideas. Well

  • look at the old masters and see how they did it. And then well bring it all together

  • at the end and hopefully have a good, basic constructed understanding of the head by the

  • end of class. So I hope you join me.

  • Okay, as we start with our head now, I think of the head as the first gesture of the body.

  • Were going to talk about the gesture and structure here. The head is the first gesture.

  • As we look at the art, as you look at me, youre going to look here first and then

  • move down through. So if this is a book, chapter number one here. We have to get this right

  • and then everything follows from that. In fact, we can use the head as a yardstick to

  • measure the rest of the body to make sure it follows. So we want to get that head working,

  • and were going to make it out of the anatomy here. We have two major anatomical elements.

  • Weve got the skull, the full round shape of the skull. And then weve got the mask

  • of the face that holds the features. Those two shapes have to work together, and then

  • we flow off that. All the detail well talk about are going to work on these great structures,

  • so were going to start with these great structures.

  • So let me set this here, and well get going.

  • Let’s talk about the proportions first. If we look at the shape of the skull, it’s

  • going to be an egg shape. Now, as we go through different characters, and well save that

  • for a different chapter, but as we go through characters well find that egg shape can

  • change in proportion. It can be a little more spherical. It can be a little more elongated.

  • Were just going to do a basic egg shape here. It could be this. It could be this.

  • Anywhere in there. That’s going to be the skull from a profile like so. It’s going

  • to be crucial to get that egg right. I’ll show you why in a moment, because it’s going

  • to give us a good connection to our next problem. Were going to draw that egg. Now if we

  • saw it from the front view or the back view that egg, just like looking at a breakfast

  • egg end on it would be a spherical shape, and itll be masked behind the features.

  • I’ll show you that in a moment. Or it will be the skull that we see, and well see

  • that also momentarily.

  • Shape of the egg, that’s our first shape. The shape of the feature mask, mask of the

  • features. Now we can do all sorts of shapes. Let’s do a different shape here for a second.

  • I’m going to do an egg, and I’m going to do another egg. Now, the advantage of doing

  • another egg is it gives us kind of a roundness, and everything on the body has a certain softness,

  • roundness. Maybe youll draw in a little child that’s very round shaped. So it can

  • be seductive to choose that egg shape. The problem is that if we draw shapes that are

  • too curvilinear, too rounded they start to get out of whack.

  • We start to have trouble getting their position.

  • So if we can feelnotice coming back up here now we did the nice, round egg because

  • that was characteristic of what we saw. We made the face shape, I made the face shape

  • a little square, a little more boxy. By making that second shape, the mask shape different

  • in character from the first it distinguishes them, and also notice we have a sense of where

  • one ends and the other begins. So we can get a sense of where the face shape comes off

  • the skull shape. That’s going to allow the position to be set more easily. Well get

  • a quicker read of how that position is. Now we know immediately that were looking down

  • slightly with that head. Whereas in here sometimes it can be a little bit out of whack. What

  • if we have a character with a really full nose and a receding chin? Were not sure

  • whether that would be right or that would be right. It can throw us. But if were

  • as little square, little flatter curve here, rounded curve here, it gives us a good sense

  • of positioning, and that’s what we want. Notice we can shortcut this. I can also take

  • this and kind of stylize it and simplify it and group the two shapes, skull and face mask,

  • into one bigger shape, a sailboat shape.

  • The advantage of this is it is much quicker, much simpler. The disadvantage is then we

  • have some work to do to get it back to that true skull shape. But quite often well

  • have a hair style, say a woman with a ponytail bun thatll cover that. So we have choices

  • there. We can make it a little simpler. We can make it a little bit more sophisticated.

  • We can keep it a little more open. We can keep it much more completed. You can choose

  • whichever you prefer. What I want, though, is something that’s simple enough for me

  • that I can get it down quickly and effectively so that I can get it down, have it work to

  • build off of, add other shapes to it, or make it simple yet characteristic so it not only

  • gets down quickly and fairly easilynothing is easy in art, especially with the head.

  • But it’s characteristic of what I see before me, the character I want to draw, the thing

  • I want to take simply and refine. If it’s still characteristic of what I see, the refinement,

  • in this case, shaving off a corn or adding on some bumps and bulges, that kind of stuff,

  • as well learn to do in a minute. That’s easier.

  • So whatever I choose in my construction I want to make sure it’s simple, simple enough

  • that it’s—I can get it down easily, characteristic of what I see so it reads well right off the

  • bad as a head that’s looking down as a woman with a certain hairstyle and characteristic

  • so I can refine it and turn it into an advanced finished rendering if I so choose. In other

  • words, I’m going to think like a sculptor. I’m going to start out with something simple,

  • and then I’ll refine it. I’ll add to it, take away from it, build it, and finish it.

  • Now, that’s the structural idea.

  • If you have or plan to go to any of my basic drawing classes, youll find that I have

  • two ideas, the structure and the gesture. The gesture, there is actually two gestures

  • to the head. There is the gesture of the skull going back this way. Let me switch colors

  • so you can see that. Gesture of the skull going back and the gesture of the face going

  • down. If we draw it againyou can see by drawing that simple sailboat shape. It’s

  • one of the reasons I like it for quick sketches. It’s characteristic, it’s simple. But

  • it still shows not just a characteristic shape that’s useful, but a characteristic of the

  • two gestures of the skull going back.

  • One of the big mistakes people make is theyll have the mask of the face pretty well set

  • however theyve chosen to do it, but then theyll draw the skull this way. Theyll

  • give it short shrift. Itll be the wrong proportion. There is not enough there to fit

  • on a neck, for example. Look how skinny the neck gets when you get that skull wrongly

  • set. But also, we don’t get that drift back. We get a rolling curve up off the face. We

  • don’t feel that characteristic move back from face to skull. It starts to look a little

  • alien. Oftentimes, a hairstyle might fill out somehow and hide that drift backward,

  • but we still want to feel it.

  • The other thing that we want here, and notice I could make this much more boxy. Make much

  • more square choices rather than round choices so we have a continuum of choices there. Notice

  • what happens when I thrust that skull back with or without the hairstyle, and I’m really

  • conscious of that move back to the skull as opposed to that movement down for the face.

  • Then I’m going to respect the fact that the skull hits up high at the top of our construction.

  • That’s going to give me a much better fit, and well go through this idea of connecting,

  • fitting to the next thing, the neck, in more detail. Notice that we come off the throat.

  • We come off the back of the neck. We put in a little bit of shoulder line so you can get

  • a sense of where we’d be going with that. Notice how high the skull and neck connect.

  • They connect very high. In fact, they connectlet’s do that so you can see what were after

  • and visualize more clearly. Notice that the head and neckthe skull and neck come together

  • about at the eyeline. In other words, if I check—I’m always my own best model. If

  • I feel where the bone of the skull meets the meat the neck, look at where that is right

  • there. If I throw that skull off and make it incorrect, make it too much of a ball,

  • a little ball that looks alien, or a really big ball like this, notice what happens here.

  • The neck fits too low.

  • If you have a real heroic guy, a superman character you can kind of get away with that

  • with the bull neck because the meat fills up and takes us up to that higher or at least

  • close to that higher level there, and we can get away with that. Actually the books, the

  • very fine books by Andrew Loomis, he uses a stylization. But he’s doing these heroic

  • fashion models, kind of fashion model meets Superman character, so he can get away with

  • that because he’s doing this heroic type. But if youre doing the average person it’s

  • quite a different connection.

  • Alright, so again from the profile we keep that egg shape up high. That gives us the

  • sense of the movement going back. We build the face down. Notice I can do this. I can

  • do this. I can do this. All those choices. Simple, yet characteristic. As long as it’s

  • that, pick whichever you want or myriad others. So gesture going back, gesture going down.

  • This is the one that really counts. If you goof this up we have the problems that I suggested.

  • The reason I say this one really counts is this is the gesture that’s going to then

  • flow into the rest of the body as we move down. So it’s the face to the neck. The

  • neck to the torso. The torso to the hips, legs, all that good stuff. So we want to make

  • sure were thinking of this movement down. Now, let’s look at the proportions here.

  • If I were to take this whole structure notice it’s the mask of the face without the features,

  • without the nose sticking out, without the eye sockets digging in. It’s the skull without

  • the hairstyle. But if I were to take that bare-bones construction youll notice that

  • it creates a square that is just slightly longer in the face and slightly shorter in

  • the skull. Okay, so it’s not a perfect square. Let’s say this would be a perfect square.

  • It’s a little longer. If youre going to screw up a little longer yet, and what

  • that does is just give a heroic chin. Even if youre doing a woman it feels attractive.

  • If you get too long, which can happen, then it’s a problem. Just a little extra going

  • down. Then notice once you add hairstyle and features, nose pushing out, hairdo pushing

  • back, that can reverse, of course. But that gives you a sense of the construction.

  • Let’s just take this farther. If we break this whole thing in half, so equal part here

  • or there more or less. Again, if I’m going to screw up, always a little extra chin is

  • kind of the default ideal, at least in western art, in heroic art. But if we get that halfway

  • point, cut it in half, that is basically the eyeline. Let me put a little bit of the eyebrow

  • in there just so you can see it. Notice the eyeline where the upper lid meets the lower

  • lid. That’s a halfway point. Again, that’s about where the neck is, neck meets skull

  • somewhere in there. If you ended up down here or up here, anywhere in that range, youre

  • still good. More than likely the hairstyle is going to cover it anyway. Or if it’s

  • a male with short hair, you know, the filling in of that more massive neck relatively more

  • massive neck is going to take care of it.

  • Without the hair skull to chin, cut it in half, you have the eyeline. eyeline to chin,

  • cut it in half and youve got the nose. It can be a little shorter, a little longer,

  • but that’s more or less the nose. When you say the nose not the tip of the nose, but

  • where the root of the nose meets the mouth shape in there. Cut it in half again, the

  • edge of the lower lip on average. Again, if I have a little too much chin that’s better

  • than a little too much upper lip here, upper plain, and two little chins. I want to keep

  • this a little shorter if I’m going to goof up, the chin a little fuller and bigger if

  • I’m going to goof up.

  • It’s always nice as an artist to know which way to screw up, where to error. If we generally

  • as we go down, if we make each thing a little bigger than it should have beennose slightly

  • longer, chin slightly fuller, then the neck a little longer than it should have been,

  • the torso, the limbs, the legs all the way down. Adding that length it just looks more

  • statuesque or more heroic. That’s usually in western art especially, and western art

  • has kind of taken over the world aesthetically at this point. With lot of exceptions, but

  • just in general that’s going to be more idealized. That’s why women wear the high

  • heels, longer fingernails, low cut gown here, putting the hair up. It creates that length

  • that seems more beautiful, more idealized.

  • Let’s look at the front view then. Let me go back here. If we come across to the front

  • now I’m just going to do a sphere. Notice that the eyeline herelet me switch here

  • one more time. Notice that the eyeline which was our halfway point wasn’t the skull.

  • The skull could have been where the skull meets the neck could have been at that point.

  • It could have been lower. It could have been quite a bit lower. It could have been down

  • here. So it doesn’t necessarily have any correspondence. It could even be higher in

  • some cases. That skull is coming down and crossing that eyeline point at whatever place

  • it crosses it. But the bottom of the egg is a little bit different. The bottom of the

  • egg will make that a little bit fuller down here. In general, if we cut the egg in half,

  • the ball in half, I should say. If we take that spherical end, cut the ball in half,

  • one half, two halves, add another half. If I’m going to screw up make it a little too

  • long, a little more of a half, half-plus rather than less. But we can use that as a construction of the head, making it a

  • little bit more heroic in the jaw or not. Either way.

  • Notice then what we have. We have a head without the ears, without the ears, without the hairstyle.

  • Put those on in a second. We have a head that is one, two halves wide. We put it down here.

  • And we have a head that is one, two, three halves long. So this is almost a perfect square.

  • It’s whatever by whatever. This is a 2 x 3 proportion, two across, three down. That’s

  • because the lose the drift of the skull going back. It’s now hiding behind the face. Well

  • see it in a little bit, the face hiding behind the skull. Let’s do this. So there is half

  • the skull. There is the rest of that round sphere for the skull. There is adding onto

  • it the rest of the mask of the face, which adds to the other half. There is our two by

  • one, two, three proportion. In that middle proportion, that middle half, the ears will

  • tend to sit in there. They can drop down quite a bit lower. Every once in a while they can

  • rise up a little bit higher, although that looks a little wolfish when you do that, a

  • little like an elf or something. But the ears tend to sit somewhere in that middle third.

  • They tend to be symmetrical although youll see a lot of people where one ear is actually

  • lower than the other ear. Well talk about how to draw ear shapes later in detail. But

  • for now you can just do a little C-shape, a little egg shape, a more chiseled boxy shape,

  • or any variation of that. Make it more rounded on the bottom, square on the top, any of those.

  • You can curve these. Anything like that is fine. Well find that the cheek, the side

  • of our skull egg is overlapping that ear and hiding some of it. So we want to have a sense

  • of that idea, the overlapping. It’s behind and below. The ear sits in there.

  • And then this same rule is true, of course, what’s going to be true from the profile

  • will be true from the front view. Let’s just switch back to this. So if I went back

  • to my full shape and cut it in half, let’s say here, this would be my eyeline in there.

  • That’s where the upper lid and lower lids, if we just think of it as a real simple almond,

  • well have to be more sophisticated than that. But the eyeline where upper lid meets

  • lower lid if it was a little Egyptian it’d be where the makeup line is. That’s more

  • or less our halfway point. It’s better to make, again, our halfway a little more chin

  • for heroic reasons without the hairstyle.

  • Then if we cut that in half that’s more or less the nose. The root of the nose where

  • it’s meets the mouth. Not the tip of the nose. It might turn up or it might hook down

  • in relationship to that. Then if we split that in half right in here, then that would

  • be where the lips sit on that construction line. The halfway point is where the lower

  • lip rests. The rest below that is chin in here.

  • Now, when you do this front viewagain, it’s without the hairstyle. Oftentimes youll

  • lay this out and youll go, okay, I did everything I was told to do. It still feels

  • funny. Sometimes youll lay that out and youll realize that youve drawn the whole

  • face and you haven’t really drawn the skull. Sometimes youll need to come back then

  • and add a little bit more skull, and maybe even add a little bit more skull up this way.

  • Once again, if you added a little extra chin below then adding more skull above youre

  • balancing out. It’s not going to look funny. It’s not going to look like an alien with

  • a little face down here squished or a little infant, fetus kind of thing. So having that

  • extra chin can help for that. It’s real easy from these front views to draw in effect

  • an egg. That’s a real quick version of this, but notice when I do that it has a certain

  • character. The width up here is equal to the width down here, whereas here even with a

  • strong jawed male were going to have the shapes diminish down towards the chin and

  • fill out towards the skull shape. And so it’s more of a true chicken egg kind of thing,

  • where it’s tapering down. It’s a truer egg rather than just an ellipse.

  • The other thing I’ll do sometimes is notice how adding that square mask of the face that

  • we talked about earlier. Square this out a little bit. When I do that

  • notice how this line and this line are now parallel to each other. In fact, they are

  • parallel to the center line. We draw an imaginary center line so that we can space the features.

  • We have a little bit of nose on this side, equal amount more or less on that side. We

  • have a little gap here. Then the eye starts. We have the same more or less little gap here,

  • and then that eye starts. So we have that symmetry. The eyebrows arch up, and theyre

  • going to be symmetrical give or take an expression or such off that natural center line. As soon

  • as we draw then rather than the egg a pill shape, a capsule shape, notice when were

  • thinking that way then our center line tracks in these more difficult positions. Then we

  • have the tapering chin that is very square into the, off the jaw, or we have the rounder

  • chin that rounds smoothly off the jaw, whichever the character suggests. Younger, feminine,

  • child-like, be a little rounder. Square or more heroic, more exaggerated superhero-ish,

  • more male, a little squarer. Take your pick. Once again, as we lay this stuff in, split

  • it in half. There are the eyes. Eyebrow line somewhere over there. Well look at hat.

  • Nose, lips. The rest is chin. And you might say, whoops, I gave them too much chin or

  • her too much chin, and you can trim it off before you move on to the next idea. Well

  • figure out how to add that stuff on momentarily.

  • And then you say, well, I have to get my ears. Theyre somewhere between the eyebrow line

  • and the ear incidentally. Come back here up to that third again, and you can see the parts

  • of the eyebrows just on a broad average depending on the expressions, the character, the arch

  • of the eyebrows can be at that third line. Notice that I can design the proportions of

  • this head based on halves. Cut in half you have the eyeline. Cut the lower half in half

  • again. You have the nose line. Cut that lower half in again youve got the lower edge

  • of the lower lip line. So having down gives you your information, or we can do it in thirds.

  • We can say from the top of the skull without the hair down one-third that’s the eyebrow

  • line. Down another third that’s close to the nose line. Down another third youre

  • at the chin. The hairline would be inside that breaking that up.

  • So there are several ways to do it. But in any case, well go in between the eyebrow

  • line and the nose line for those thirds, one-third, two-thirds, three-thirds. Nose to chin is

  • the three-thirds. Eyebrow to nose is the middle two-thirds. The first third is the top there.

  • And then we add our ear somewhere in there symmetrically placed. Then we realize, whoops,

  • we need a little more skull maybe because we just drew a capsule that was perfectly

  • symmetrical. It showed the face shape, didn’t give us that fuller skull shape. And then

  • we build off there to build the hairline and all that good stuff in the shape of the styled

  • hair and all that.

  • Okay, so that’s our basic idea. Coming back now to this. Once I’ve got a good chin,

  • good back of the skull, however I’ve done it; good chin, good back of the skull can

  • be rather sophisticated, very sophisticated, more so than we do here, more like well

  • do later, or the simplest possible choice. In either case there is relatively simple,

  • yet characteristic. I can find now the neck right off this chin. Notice what happens here.

  • The chin goes back this way. That’s called the digastrics plane. That’s the thickness

  • of the face. One of the dangers of drawing the mask of the face is it looks like just

  • a mask. If you get it at some weird angle it looks like a cut out cardboard Halloween

  • mask with your cutout features on there, and it’s not convincing.

  • So what we need to feel is that bottom plane to the face. It gives it thickness. That’s

  • called the digastric plane. It gives thickness here from different angles as well see

  • later. Well find that more clearly, and it will give us great volume. It will keep

  • this from looking like it’s flat and cutout. Notice were working on a flat page, and

  • yet were trying to get the idea of volume. That’s always a hurdle for the artist to

  • jump. So we go along that digastrics plane, and then we go right down the throat. If there

  • is a big Adam’s apple we ignore it and swing back. Unless youre a ballet dancer or a

  • soldier at attention usually there is a little bit of sag. I’ll exaggerate it. Little bit

  • of sag. So that neck to chin, from the pit of the neck to the chin thrusts forward. That

  • gives us even in a fairly upright view there is a thrusting forward that has this beautiful

  • movement forward. Well find that that becomes a dance of forms that plays all the way through

  • the body.

  • So chin through the simplified neck to the pit of the neck. Anywhere in here is fine.

  • You made it a little too long. You made it a little too swinging back or a little too

  • not quite thrusting forward enough. Anywhere in there youre probably going to be fine.

  • Notice that making it too long is a much better mistake than making it too short. Length for

  • the next form, form number one, form number two, construction number one to construction

  • number two. Each time making the next structure all the way through the body a little longer

  • is a better error, better mistake to make usually than the reverse.

  • But anywhere in there were good. So let’s pick one. Now I’m going to come off the

  • back of the skull, coming off the back of the skull. Anywhere in here is good. Youre

  • only real guide will be not to make this too skinny or too thick. Make sure the neck speaks

  • to the character or the model. Is it a big bull-necked guy or is it a long and wispy

  • neck? Make sure it rings true for that. And if youre a little off or you should have

  • made it a little chubbier, should have made it a little skinnier, you can always add more

  • on later as you come to that realization. As long as youre in the ballpark youre

  • good. Notice this great change here. Notice how low the chin starts—I’m sorry, the

  • neck starts in the front. Notice how high. It may not be that high. It could be anywhere

  • in here. Again, you have room for error. Notice how high, let’s just pick this one in the

  • middle. Notice how much higher the neck connects to the head structure in the back. It connects

  • very high in the back. It connects very low in front. Getting that high-low is going to

  • be what gives it credibility. Notice when we put on our costumes herelet me button

  • thisnotice how my shirt tracks that same high-low. Notice how the collar sits up high

  • in back and sits down low in front, following that same torquing dynamic of the neck. That’s

  • going to lead us in a very interesting way into the body. Well see that a little bit

  • later, again. Tease, tease, tease on that.

  • If it should be a little bit fatter, it’s out here. Anywhere in there is good as long

  • as this is ballpark and as long as that sits up high. So my two parameters are to make

  • the neck in the ballpark of the correct thickness. Don’t make it super skinny. Don’t make

  • it super fat. If it’s way out here it’s a problem. If it’s way in here it’s a

  • problem. Somewhere in that mid-range of thickness. And make sure the neck connects into the skull

  • or underneath the hairstyle. Maybe the hairstyle does this. Make sure like the neck feels like

  • it connects to that skull up high in back. Make sure that it feels like it connects to

  • the face down low in front, and youre good.

  • Now, if we go to a front view we will find on a younger model child, young adult, youll

  • oftentimes get a thinner neck. Not every time, but just on average. So if you make it thinner

  • it’s going to look younger and/or more feminine. If you make it thicker itll look more male,

  • a little older, mature, and more heroic. If you then get a very aged model it can thin

  • out again on you. But if you want to do a heroic male as Loomis did as I mentioned before,

  • youll make the neck almost as wide or as wide, just depending as the jaw line on the

  • male. If you wanted it to be more feminine or younger youll make the neck a little

  • more narrow than the fattest part of the jaw line somewhere around that nose line, basically.

  • Where the nose line is that’s the widest part of the jaw because it’s coming off

  • that big ball of the head, the skull, before it tapers to the skinny, narrow chin. So anywhere

  • in here is good.

  • The only time youre going to make it much bigger is if youve got some lineman for

  • the 49’s, you know, some football team, some big massive athlete type, bodybuilder,

  • you know, all that kind of stuff. Or youre drawing a superhero, a character that’s

  • hyper heroic, you know, a comic book Captain America, the Hulk, that kind of stuff. But

  • the normal average person, average mature athletic male, youre not going to get any

  • wider than that. Notice when we addlet’s do it again down here. When we go down low

  • in front high in back, pay special attention to the thickness of the neck and correct accordingly.

  • Were doing an hourglass kind of shape. Now the head can really articulate on the

  • torso and twist that neck into all sorts of stuff back and forth. It can pinch it like

  • an accordion, stretch and pinch like an accordion. But in general, most of the time youre

  • going to feel that hourglass idea. That kind of thing going on. So when it’s more profile

  • think of the hourglass. When it’s more front or back view think of the tube, just a simple

  • tube. It’s a tube that’s stiff and straight if it’s a guard at attention. Or it’s

  • a tube that’s curve if the head is in some dynamic position in relationship to the body.

  • So it can curve off like so.

  • Alright, so now let’s start looking at other positions here. Weve got the basics. What

  • happens if we get behind. Well, from the front the mask shape with all the features dominates

  • the skull. You don’t see much skull. In fact, drawing that capsule or the tube idea

  • shows you can do a pretty good head. Then you just fill in with a little bit of skull

  • you missed. On the back view it’s all skull. And the face is hidden. That creates a different

  • set of problems. So what were going to find, and again we are our own best models.

  • Well notice that the skull is now facing you guys, facing the camera. Facing the viewer

  • of our artwork. I notice it goes down into the neck, of course. Whatever hairstyle in

  • there is in there. But head, skull, and neck flow together. The face is around the front,

  • hidden.

  • So as I said, it’s going to create its own set of problems. The big simple shape is easier.

  • We don’t have all those pesky features to plot out carefully in proportions halves and

  • thirds and all of our choices and proportion. But, it’s going to be harder to place this

  • thing in space and be effective with it. It’s going to be real easy to make it look like

  • a lollipop, just a ball on a stick. It’s not going to be very satisfying. So what I’m

  • going to do is I’m going to take special attention to how the neck fits. Let’s go

  • back to the front view again and do a quick version of our face. Weve got room for

  • error on this kind of stuff. Just do that much so you get the sense of things. Then

  • we had that tube of the neck from a front view we said. We just kind of stopped it there.

  • It was curved or it was straight, but it was just a tube. The fact is, when I’m learning

  • any particular body part, the head, the hands, the rib cage, whatever it is, I want to pay

  • some attention; in fact, I want to pay special attention to how it connects to the other

  • or others, the other body parts. So I want to know how the rib cage connects into the

  • shoulder girdle and into the head and neck and definitely how it connects down into the

  • pelvis. I want to know how the thigh connects to the hips and down into the lower leg. In

  • this case I want to know how the head and neck connect into the shoulder line and then

  • into the rib cage.

  • So were going to talk about that a little bit. Were going to depart from our subject

  • so that when we get a mastery control of our subject, get confidence in our subject then

  • we can integrate that into the whole figure that is probably our goal. Even if were

  • doing a portrait, a bust shot, you know, portrait commissions is our bread and butter. We still

  • need to show that connectivity. Very seldom are we doing to have a floating head without

  • anything to it. So always pay attention to the connections. When I’m drawing from life

  • or drawing from reference, I’ll spend several drawings, maybe every 5th drawing working

  • on the connections. Or if I have more time I lay in a good head then I’ll go ahead

  • and lay in some of the connective tissue, the connective shapes for the shoulder line,

  • so I can feel how it moves into that new hole. So if I was drawing these two together and

  • I had more time, I’d go to the connection at the elbow. Spend more time drawing and

  • analyzing that so I feel a more confident and a truer connection there for my audience

  • and a better understanding for me. So the connection, the joints are key, the transition

  • points where you go from one part to the next are key in our understanding so we need a

  • little bit of information.

  • So head and neck. Now, pit of the neck will be somewhere down here. Again, another third

  • of a head. So you can use the skull or hairline with the heroic pose and with a fuller skull.

  • Notice how the hairline is a good place to pick a third, one third, two thirds down to

  • the nose, three thirds down to the chin. Notice I didn’t do all that great of job in doing

  • my thirds. This is too much. This is too little. Maybe this is just right. And it’s still

  • forgiving isn’t it? It still feels good, good enough.

  • If it doesn’t feel like a likeness of our model because were drawing some big chinned

  • fellow, we can always a little bit more if we needed. So weve got room for error.

  • We don’t have to nail exactly. If were sculptors we can always add a little extra

  • clay later or take a little clay away as we need. This goes down. The neck will end at

  • the pit of the neck in front. As I said, it’s another third equal to these, more or less.

  • If I’m going to screw up better to make it too long and make it more of a half. Oftentimes

  • if youre doing a statuesque woman youll give her a longer neck. It’s more attractive.

  • It seems to be more in terms of the Greco-Roman classical sense, that longer neck is more

  • attractive. The male, bull neck, little shorter is fine.

  • So anywhere from that third to half range gets us to the pit of the neck. Let’s stay

  • with the third which is usually more accurate on average. Now what I’m going to find is

  • I’m going to have a shoulder line, and the shoulder line can be, you can pick out any

  • of a number of anatomical points, and I won’t go through the minutia of that. But anywhere

  • in here is fine. Anywhere where you go from top to side, that shoulder line into the arm

  • transition. Here, here, here. Weve got room for error. Doesn’t matter. Pick a spot.

  • You can pick it right at the collar boneor I’m sorry, right at the pit of the neck.

  • It can be a little bit above, anywhere in there. Usually it’s a little bit above is

  • usually more accurate because we have that slightly hunching posture that I talked about

  • that drops to the pit of the neck. If you come up like this at attention then it gets

  • up closer to the shoulder line. But anywhere in there is great. Shoulder line. Then were

  • going to have the shrugging muscles, the trapezius. Theyre going to be the transition you have

  • to take us from the tubular neck out to that shoulder line. It’s just a sagging triangle.

  • But it’s a triangle. It feels good to do that so sometimes I’ll take extra time just

  • to squeeze it, but basically what I’m looking for is that goes right behind my neck. Where

  • is it going? Behind the tube of the neck. Here is the tube. This is a top and back muscle.

  • It goes down all the way to the mid back, trapezius. It’s a shrugging

  • muscle. It does this basically.

  • So all I’m going to do is do a sagging triangle. The skinnier I make the neck the more I sag

  • it. The younger and the more feminine it will seem. The thicker I make the neck and the

  • fullerin fact, it can bulge over this way even if youre doing a heroic character.

  • The fuller I make that triangle it’s going to look more mature. Not old as in elderly

  • but more mature and more male and also more heroic goes with that, of course. So Superman

  • might be here. Star football player might be here. The average guy on the street might

  • be there. An old man or woman might be way down here. But anywhere in there is good so

  • as long as it’s similar to what we see, characteristic of what we see. Typically it’s

  • a sagging triangle, as I said.

  • Notice that we havewell just default to one type now, the more heroic male. This

  • is the neck coming from behind the face, coming down, and it just fades away actually. In

  • subtle ways that well deal with in another lecture group. Not in the head group. This

  • is the shrugging muscle going behind it. So you can imagine going way up and attaching

  • to the school and back. Well see that in a moment. Then we have the neck in front of

  • that sagging triangle. The tube is in front of the triangle. The neck is front of the

  • trapezius. And so if we were to draw this as just a really simple tube that were

  • slightly underneath we’d feel that. It’s behind.

  • So now when we come here I’m going to do the same thing. I don’t have the mask of

  • the face though. I’m going to draw the tube of the triangle, and I’ll make it nice and

  • fat and wide or nice and skinny, however seems appropriate. I’ll do that. Let’s color

  • code it. Itll actually attach up here. There is the neck of our heroic male, let’s

  • say. It attaches up here even though the egg sits much lower. It doesn’t come to a point.

  • If you felt back there you could feel that. It’s two cables basically that split around

  • the spine. They have thickness so it comes up like this, sags down this way, and sits

  • on the shoulder line. Well doing more male looking art because that’s a long, fairly

  • full, let’s make it a little fuller trapezius, and we have that nice wide neck. That’s

  • what’s doing most of the work.

  • Notice now over here we have the neck tube in front of the triangle. Now we have the

  • triangle in front of the neck like so. Pretty sophisticated stuff there. Since we don’t

  • have all the features to mark out this looks pretty easy now to me. I just have to get

  • this stuff plotted out basically with construction lines and little dashes in effect for the

  • placement, the rough placement of the features. I can just do this little kind of robotic

  • schematic hairline, all that good stuff. That’s pretty easy compared to this. There is some

  • sophisticated thinking going on. Notice that we had the neck and then the mask of the face

  • was in front of the neck. So the face is in front of the neck. The neck is front of the

  • trapezius, the shrugging muscle. From the back view it reverses. The triangle, trapezius

  • shrugging muscle is closest to us. The neck is farther, and the face, unless we have a

  • huge neck, well see a little bit of face, the face is the farthest yet. A little bit

  • of face. A little bit of face for that wider chin and skinnier neck relationship.

  • Then notice where here the ears were almost an afterthought. We stuck them on because

  • theyre visible and they deserve to be there. But they didn’t really add a lot of information,

  • any new information to the mix. It was just plotting out one more detail like picking

  • out eyeglasses. When I put on eyeglasses it’s not really giving me more information, just

  • a new shape in there. And so from a front view, this straight-on front view, the ears

  • don’t add much other than a more refined character of what we were seeing. But here,

  • the ears are going to be much more important because they are going to be the only feature

  • that we see. All the other features are hidden around that far side. So drawing those ears

  • are important. Notice how I drew them. I just drew them like this. In fact, I made a little

  • double line or a thick dark construction either way, and that shows the thickness of the ear.

  • As we get into the ear construction well do segments, chapters on each feature in detail.

  • There’s a lot to be understood with each and every feature. One of the things well

  • notice is that C-shape or whatever hybrid shape we drew for it has a thickness. Otherwise,

  • it’s going to be flat and not be believable. Itll have a thickness just like the mask

  • had that digastric plane thickness idea. So we could draw the ear from a front view like

  • this to show that thickness. Think of it as a disc, a slice of a tube like that. So when

  • we put the cheek on it were seeing this much of that disc or slice, and the rest is

  • hidden. From a back view then well see that whole back of the ear thickness here.

  • That’s what were drawing. So drawing a double line in effect shows us that thickness.

  • All this subtle stuff in here we don’t have to worry about because it’s just a construction

  • at this point. This is the simplest, most characteristic thing we can do. Again, it’s

  • in that middle third range. But it’s harder to see that isn’t it because the chin gets

  • lost down here. The hair is here but we can’t see the eyebrow line. We can’t see a hairline,

  • so we can’t inch our way down to that or inch our way up to that position. So it’s

  • a little trickier.

  • Then youll have the hairline, itll do whatever it does, maybe a little ducktail

  • shape in here, or it’s whatever, you know, long hair covers whatever is going on there.

  • But well just do that. That sits in there. Each of these little details, you know, you

  • could have a little cowlick spiral here, or this could be a bun or ponytail. Hair, any

  • of those details will help. Notice that we can take again the head of the skull, I should

  • say the skull, the face, and neck, and we can turn this whole thing into a simpler idea,

  • just a tube, kind of this idea. So I’m going to do a tube and then here is my shoulder

  • line, let’s say. And then I need to go back through those machinations we just went through.

  • Let’s see, this is the center of the head. It’s right here. That’s that. There is

  • the neck. Here are the ears here. You can turn them this way if it’s the complete

  • back view you can turn them in the same direction if they start turning into some kind of three-quarters.

  • So if this head is starting to turn this way a little bit then we can turn the ear that

  • way. Then we can just place it in that mid range of the structure. Maybe we see a little

  • bit of the jaw going into the chin before it gets lost. Maybe we don’t. That’s that.

  • So that gives us a basis for connection. Were not showing any of the articulation yet of

  • doing this kind of stuff. Well deal with that later. But that gives us the basics.

  • The last thing I want, I should have mentioned earlier and I didn’t—let’s do this.

  • The ear. When we place that ear we said if see it from a front or back view the ear sits

  • in the middle third of the head more or less. You can use the top of the skull or you can

  • use the hairline. I usually use the hairline. It feels a little more accurate. It ends up

  • making the features a little fuller, gives the chin a little bit more oomph. When we

  • use the top of the skull oftentimes the chin feels a little shorter, and the nose may be

  • a little too big. But anyway, anywhere in there is good. So the ear sits in the middle

  • section of the head. There is a section on top. There is a section on the bottom. The

  • middle section is where the ears float in more or less. They fill up the whole section.

  • They are smaller than that. They can be slightly below it or slightly above it. But theyre

  • in that mid range. When we get to a profile we can see the same thing happening. Let’s

  • put our box back in here and notice the way I drew that. Bad teacher. It should be a little

  • less here and a little more here. There is our box there. There is our box there more or less without features

  • or hairstyle, a little longer in length, a little shorter in width going across.

  • Notice if we come in front of the ear that sideburn area, cut it in half, the ear is

  • very close to the halfway point of the head there. So the middle of the ear or the whole

  • ear sits in the middle of the head from top to bottom, however you want to do it. The

  • middle of the ear is at the middle, or the ear sits in the middle third. Take your pick,

  • doesn’t matter. Also, it’s in the middle this way. The front of the ear touches or

  • comes very close to that midrange. Give or take features and hairstyle. Like so. It sits in

  • that midrange. That’s incredibly useful because now look what happens. If I take that

  • same I’m going to use as simple as possible shape now. Take that same sailboat shape.

  • If I take this section here and cut it in half and put it in there, make sure it sits

  • more or less in the bottom third. But if youre off some notice how this got much bigger.

  • This got much shorter. It doesn’t hurt anything, really, but you can adjust it down or trim

  • it back accordingly. But when I do that it feels like a nice profile like this.

  • Let’s do it again. I’m going to draw that same sailboat shape. Now instead of putting

  • it in the mid-area more or less, I’m going to push it really close or fairly close to

  • the front of the face. When you do that, now notice that the face, the jaw, the face, always

  • sits in front of the ear. It ends in front of the ear. It doesn’t go behind the ear.

  • It sits in front of the ear. Some people will draw that ear and then theyll put the face

  • back here. It’s got to sit in front of the ear. Look how little face there is now. Let

  • me flesh this out a little bit. I’ll show you how to do this another time, but just

  • so you can see it. There is a little bit of the nose, a little bit of lips, eyebrow, eyelashes,

  • hairstyle. Let’s do this to make it easy on us. There’s the neck’s appropriate

  • thickness. Well deal with how to articulate this later. Let’s just leave it like that.

  • Notice if I push the ear towards the front of the face youve done this. Youve gotten

  • behind the head. The farther we push that ear to the front of the face until it overlaps

  • it slightly off axis, overlaps it perfectly into a back view. That ear positions the head

  • this way in the rotation. Now, when weve got a front of the face it’s less important

  • because we have all the features. Once we get past the profile then those featureslook

  • at how the features, the nose. And again, well look at this more carefully later.

  • The nose and the lips and the eyelashes are overlapped by that cheek and jaw construction.

  • Were starting to lose those. So placing that earlet’s do it again.

  • Now I’m going to push the ear back here. I’ll keep it in the middle third more or

  • less. I’ll make it a little smaller, a little bigger, anywhere in there. I can always adjust

  • it slightly if I need to. Notice now when the ear pushes back getting very close to

  • or equal to the back edge more and less, more and less. Now we start to get a three-quarter view. Notice now if

  • we do the center line of the features it’d be over here, and were in a three-quarter

  • view in there. So the placement of the ear, crowd the skull. Youre more of a front three-quarter

  • view. Crowd the face youre more of a three-quarter back view. Get the ears on the outside or

  • very close to the outside, youre in a full or more or less full back view. Put them on

  • the outside in front, ditto for the front view.

  • So where you push the ear this way or that gives you incredible information. It gives

  • your audience incredible information very, very quickly about how it’s placed in space.

  • Alright, so the ear is a wonderful thing. This is the simplest of our choices is my

  • favorite for these simple constructions. If I’m doing a real careful portrait, I’ll

  • break the shape of the skull down and the face carefully. But I almost always start

  • with this. Even if I’m doing a big painting with a big full realized head, it’s just

  • easier to place. So let me talk about the ear again. So as I said, if we crowd the ear

  • into the face were getting behind that face. Well notice that the brow, check,

  • jaw, start to overlap and cover our features. They hide away.

  • That’s true, of course. Same way if I crowd the skull. Now it’s turning toward us. And

  • we don’t need any more information than that to start to get the idea that were

  • now in a three-quarter front view. Were certainly going to want to do more, but immediately

  • that gives us and our viewer, our audience, a clue into what the position is. But also

  • notice if I push the ear down lowerlet me do this. I’m going to more fully realize

  • that skull. In fact, I’m going to make it boxy because when I get into difficult perspectives

  • the squarer I make things, the more clearly it is placed in space. It’s the corners

  • and the alignment of the sides that due to our vanishing points if we were to be that

  • ambitious and give us a sense of true position.

  • If I do roundnessand again, look to my basic drawing lessons for a full explanation

  • of this. But the rounder things are it can have a good sense of rendered volume, but

  • it doesn’t have great sense of position. Are you behind this ball or in front of this

  • ball. Until you get something else in relationship to it you don’t know. But here you know

  • immediately how it’s sitting, that it’s tilted facing, tipping in certain three-dimensional

  • position. So the squarer things go, the better in terms of working out difficult perspectives,

  • difficult proportions because we can break those corners down into measureable segments

  • and difficult dynamic objects. Notice by pushing that ear a little bit lower from a, just really

  • generically let’s do this and this one, two, three. Let’s say those are equal, and

  • we put the ear right in the middle that way and this way. That’s a perfect profile.

  • We’d add on all the stuff. I’ll a little bit of stuff just so you can feel the truth

  • of that idea. That’s a perfect profile give or take proportions, of course, of the character

  • youre drawing. If I move it this way it turns. If I move this way it turns. If I push

  • it up this way or if I push it down that way, it’s now going to turnwell, not turn,

  • tilt in and out of the picture plane. So by pushing the ear down a little bit lower I’m

  • going to exaggerate it here. Well see this better when we get some reference and we do

  • more sophisticated versions of these things. But for now this is as far as were going

  • to take it. There is that kind of stuff. Again, I’ll help you work that out more carefully

  • later, but just so you can see in context.

  • Notice how we have the ear, less than an ear away from the chin, or even let’s say a

  • full ear away from the chin. Here we have an ear and a half or an ear and two-thirds

  • from the top of the head. That wasn’t true here. We were very close here. So as the ear

  • gets lower we start to get on top of it. You can see it right here. Here’s my ear somewhere

  • in the middle. Now as I do this the chin is receding so the ear is getting closer to the

  • bottom of the head structure, and the skull is coming and revealing more and so were

  • getting visually more mass on top. And then, of course, the reverse would be true. Push

  • the head down. Were on top of the head just were on top of a tube. Push the head

  • up. I’m sorry, push the ear up. It’s going to make us feel like we are underneath the head.

  • Again, I’ll show you subtleties of this at a later time. I’m just putting them in

  • now so you can really clearly visualize what I’m saying. Notice when you lay in these

  • very simple shapes sometimes you have to modify them to make them ring true for that particular

  • dynamic position. In the simpler positions we can do simpler shapes in more dynamic positions.

  • It’s a difference between looking at a box or looking at a box. In the more dynamic positions

  • we have to articulate those shapes a little more carefully. You might find you need to

  • lift a little bit. You need to square out a little bit. Notice also we can conceive

  • of this as a boxy form. I’m going to make it very simple here. Again, I’ll describe

  • and explain that structural stuff later, but we can make it rather boxy. So the ear can

  • be on the side of the box. And the features could be on the front of the box. The ear

  • can be on the side of the box, and all the other features are on the front of the box.

  • Or we can have it as a tubular idea. We can conceive of this, were underneath not a

  • box but a tubular idea. And the ear is on the side of the tube and the rest of the features

  • are on the front of the tube like so. Front of the tube. Notice what I’m doing here.

  • Just generically I’m going to make the eyebrow line, specifically the arch of the eyebrow,

  • the height of the ear. That’s not going to be true for every model or even most models,

  • but it’s roughly true. Oftentimes the ear will be close to the eyeline, but I love those

  • arching eyebrows. Well see this when we get into more sophisticated structure. If

  • I use the eyebrow line to the ear I have a natural construction line, whether I’m doing

  • a tube or a boxy idea, a tube or a boxy idea, notice that this is the eyebrow line and this

  • is the movement of the ear. It can be a rounder conception or a squarer conception. Here are

  • the eyes. Here is the nose. Well talk about how to do that. Here’s the mouth, the chin.

  • Notice that now I have to flesh out my skull or hairstyle to make it ring true. There is

  • a square conception. There’s the rounder conception. Chin is on the bottom of the tube,

  • or the chin is on the bottom of the box. Take your pick. Of course, we could do it egg like.

  • We could do eyebrow line to ear high line. Nose, mouth, chin. Adjust that jaw line. Again,

  • make sure that youre getting enough skull there. Oftentimes you have to add a little

  • skull on these things. Add a little skull or refine the skull.

  • Okay. And then we add theif it’s more front than side we add the tube. If it’s

  • ore back than side we add the tube. If it’s more side than front we can do the hourglass

  • idea. If it’s somewhere in between, three-quarter, you can take your pick; do either one. So

  • this would work okay doing that too, hourglass in those three quarters. Alright, so that’s

  • the basic head shape in basic articulating perspective. No deep perspective. Were

  • conceiving it as simple forms, simple shapes. It can be a simple shape that’s square,

  • a simple shapes that’s more tubular, a simple shape that’s very round. It can be a hybrid

  • of all those things. The choice doesn’t matter as long as it’s simple, yet characteristic

  • with what we see. It doesn’t depart radically from what we see unless were doing a radical

  • piece of art. Were going to play very close attention that whatever we do by the end of

  • it we feel that the skull drifts back as the face drifts down. Skull drips back, face drifts

  • down. Unless it’s very close to a full front or back view, were going to feel that skull

  • having a motion back that’s distinct. You can think of a parting of the hair. If you

  • have a hairstyle like this where the part is. The part is going to run along that axis

  • back into the skull.

  • Alright, there is one last point I want to make here before we move on. If we look at

  • our skull so we get this idea of our ear, the ear is about right here. Remember the

  • ear sits right behind the end of the jaw. The jaw sits right in front of the ear. So

  • this is a sideburn area of the hairline. The ear sits in here. So just watch this little

  • point or my finger here. As we turn this way you can see how the ear is going to crowd

  • the face and eventually overlap the face. That was the point we were making earlier.

  • Then as we come back this way the ear is going tolet’s do this for the ear, I guess.

  • The ear is going to crowd the back of the skull and then overlap the back of the skull.

  • So that ear gives us a great landmark for how this turns especially in this back three-quarter

  • range where we don’t have the features as landmarks. These features are fantastic landmarks

  • for plotting out the structure, the three-dimensional position of the head. When we get into this

  • three-quarter back view, back view to the other side, we lose that ammunition. So then

  • the ear becomes crucial. So there we have it there.

  • Likewise, if we tilt, say this is the top of the ear, as we tilt the head down notice

  • how the ear is now crowding the bottom of the face visually and moving well away from

  • the top of the face. So if you draw that ear lower in your skull shape, your sailboat shape

  • or whatever construction idea youre using, it’s going to help immediately put that

  • head in that top orientation. Likewise, if it comes this way and the top of the ear starts

  • to crowd the top of the head, now we know that getting underneath it. Again, it becomes

  • a great landmark especially in these positions to show that.

  • So anyway, that little point. Now let’s move on to our master drawings and have some fun.

  • Okay, now we have our old masters to look at. We have Hans Holbein on the left and Raphael

  • on the right. If we look at the Holbein you can see the egg. Notice we have a hat here

  • and so the skull is up in here. If I draw that basic egg shape we’d see the hat is

  • up here. Remember, when we do the egg shape, though, it’s going to be much more accurate

  • to what were after if we make that egg shape a little fatter at the top, more of

  • a true chicken egg rather than an ellipse. We can do that. Or, we could make it more

  • of a capsule shape, which means flat on the sides. Notice if we look towards the hairline.

  • I’m going to modify the hairline just slightly down into the lower jaw. You can feel that

  • kind of flattening there. The problem with that is, let’s go back again. Let me get

  • that color back. The problem with that is she’s got those wonderful cheekbones. So

  • what I’m looking for is a simple shape, egg or capsule, but the most characteristic.

  • And so I want the sense of those fine cheekbones popping out. Let’s do it this way. And so

  • maybe the bulging egg. You might even modify further.

  • Notice with this particular character we could modify. Maybe we use more of a diamond shape

  • to show off those cheekbones. Again, watch that the diamond doesn’t distort and lose

  • the mass of the skull, but maybe through the hairline we put a little diamond shape inside

  • the egg. Notice that it’s simply a characteristic, and there is a nice range of variations we

  • can do. We can modify that shape. It can be elliptical. It can be capsule-like. It can

  • be egg-shaped. It has a fatter end and a more narrow end. It can be more diamond shaped

  • and more and more and more. Lots of choices there. Round on the top, square on the bottom.

  • You have lots of ways to go. As long as it is simple, yet characteristic you choose.

  • And if youre doing refined heads, portraiture or trying to bring in personality rather than

  • a generic sense of an A-head but a personality head, then you’d want to modify those shapes.

  • Simple, yet characteristic. You want to stay nimble with that.

  • If we look at the Raphael it’s chubbier features. So the egg is fuller and rounder

  • and more—a little bigger hereand more characteristically a classic egg. Whereas

  • on the Holbein we could argue for a rather square-ish bottom here because of that strong

  • jaw of this woman. But with the Raphael that’s the case. Were going in, of course, for

  • the little baby here too. Were going for that nice simple and much more true egg shape.

  • In any of these cases there is great subtle variations of the final contour. It wobbles,

  • bumps, sharpens up, smoothes out, does all those different things that a contour is going

  • to do, but that’s in the finished stage. So again, were making it simple, yet characteristic.

  • As I’ve done the Raphael, the mother and child, we can see then simple construction

  • lines show us the center line, the eyeline, the eyebrow line, the hairline, the line of

  • the nose and the chin. Darken that up for us a little bit. And so we can break that

  • basic idea down in proportion, just a general generic proportion about halfway.

  • In this case it’s not quite true. Let’s put it down there. It’s a little more than

  • halfway on top. The top is catching more and the bottom is a little less. And with the

  • hairstyle it’s even more exaggerated. But she is actually, the position of this head

  • is actually slightly underneath us. She’s tilting forward. So if we put a bucket on

  • her head, we’d be on top of the bucket that way. So that means if we were to draw our

  • construction line that would stay the same. This line, of course, then would turn this

  • way. And so the eyes are on a slight arc moving over. And as we find that tilt with the ears

  • and such then were losing at it moves down into the paper, were losing a little bit

  • of face at the lower end. It’s getting a little shorter. Head is coming up over the

  • top towards us. Were getting a little bit greater lift of head. Notice that what I drew

  • here is a more exaggerated version than what our friend Raphael has done, and that adds

  • even more skull to the view. This one has more skull. This has less skull. This has

  • much less face and this a little more. Here is an exaggerated version of the slight tilt

  • here. This is a slight tilt compared to this one which is perfectly straight on and formal.

  • Notice that even the craftsmanship brings this up, but just in terms of design, when

  • we have a very formal pose like this, notice what it does to the feel of the piece. Notice

  • how this is more distant. Now, she has that character, but that’s one of the reasons

  • he chose this front view. She’s very formal and standoff-ish, whereas this is a mother

  • who has great empathy. So we feel that empathy and were drawn into it. So the slight tilt

  • of the head off axis and the slight tilt of the head into the picture plane adds to that

  • intimacy and that informal or compassionate view. Then this little baby is doing what

  • he is doing this way. Those baby proportions would have an effect that well save for

  • another day. Once again, always a big danger when were drawing this egg-like, capsule-like

  • constructions of the head. Notice that on this mother figure here I drew the egg without

  • enough skull. So the skull would really be out here, a fuller egg this way. And so really

  • pay attention to that. It’s a real killer for your drawing if you don’t give that

  • fullness of that skull. It loses character. If youre doing a cartoon or something that

  • could play into the style actually, but in realism youve got to feel that full skull.

  • Usually youre saved even if you screw up your construction. Even if I had stuck with

  • that original construction, by the time we add the hair, the mass of the hair on there,

  • that’s going to cover that mistake. But still, we want to see it as a truism.

  • So basically were going to draw the egg of the head or whatever simple shape, the

  • egg of the head. Then were going to draw a T, center line, center line, eyeline. That’s

  • going to split it halves. Two haves here, two halves here. More or less, give or take

  • the dynamic position of the head. Give or take the portraiture, the personality, the

  • quirky proportions to the head, but a halfway point. Then were going to build off that.

  • Notice that the band of the hat here acts pretty much as our hairline. And so if we

  • break it down into hairline and eyebrow line, eyebrow line to nose line, nose line to mouth

  • to chin. Those end up being about thirds. Now if youve got a more dynamic, dramatic,

  • heroic figure you can actually go up to the top of the head, which would be the top of

  • the skull minus the hairstyle and do thirds down, fuller nose, and that’s actually truer

  • in this case. Then the chin, despite its strength, chin and jaw is a little less so because it’s

  • a woman, more heroic character especially if it’s a male, mature male, it’d be down

  • here and you can break the thirds. But, typically, on a realistic figure if youre not trying

  • to stylize heroism into the mix you go from hairline to eyebrow line to nose line to chin,

  • and that’s your thirds. eyeline is below there, and that’s your halfway point. Top

  • of the head to eyeline, eyeline to chin.

  • Alright, here we have Piazetta in a more or less perfect profile, somewhere around that.

  • Let’s look at this from a couple of different ways. Notice the strong line here. We want

  • to be careful of that. What I really want is the line of the face. I’m cutting off

  • the features. Specifically, well see this more clearly when we get into the placement

  • of the features and all their various structures, I want to go where the forehead, more or less,

  • where the forehead bumps into the nose right there and where the lips bump into the chin

  • right there. So these two points ending up somewhere near the hairline. Of course, that

  • can change radically depending on the recession. It can be anything close to that. It doesn’t

  • have to be right on the money but in there. That’s the gesture of the face going down

  • that I’m going to build my structure, my mask on. The gesture of the skull going back,

  • I don’t want to go down this way and make that more or less a right angle. What I wanted

  • to do is rise up and back. It actually does, just the drawing fools us for a moment. So

  • it goes up this way. Notice how that opens up there. That angle opens up a little bit

  • from a right angle. If we were to do that sailboat shape it’d be here or here.

  • Anywhere in there is fine.

  • If it were to be the egg shapeslet’s just bring this right back. You could actually,

  • if you wanted to, start with the egg of the skull I here, down in here. Anywhere in this

  • range is good. Then you come right off that egg, again down to your construction or your

  • gesture line for the face. So this is an egg that has an axis going back, but notice the

  • way I drew it, it’s actually going back and up a little bit. Again, it implies that

  • opening up of that angle. Let’s make a clearer point of that. Look what happens if I go the

  • other way like that. It destroys the structure of the skull. That’s bad news there. Or

  • if we had the face coming down and the skull shape doing this. Well see a Raphael towards

  • the end of our little series here, and it suggests this. We have to be, we have to look

  • past a glance to see what he’s doing there. But if we do that, where this is drifting

  • down, it destroys the skull. You don’t have enough brains in there to be a functioning

  • human being when you do that. So we don’t want to do that. We want it to open up. Then

  • we can come off that back of the skull this way and do a modified triangle, or as we said

  • before we can use a simplified hairline in front of the ear and over to the chin down

  • here and feel the mask of the face, that mask here.

  • Notice how the ear sits right in the center.

  • Now he’s just barely turning away from us, and so that ear is crowding just a little

  • bit in this case. It varies from person to person and also canon to canon. Each artist

  • and art movement will idealize or distort the figure in a certain way, and so that will

  • play sometimes quite loosely with the facts. In this case we have the ear or the center

  • of the ear, as I said, right in the middle of the head even without the little bit of

  • hair lifting up. But anyway, it’s following our idea truly enough, close enough to work

  • with. Notice how the top of the ear lines up with the eyebrow line. That’s one thing

  • we want to pick up consistently wherever the eyebrow line is. Usually where the arch of

  • the eyebrow is we want the ear to be at that or close to that. That’s going to give us

  • a lot of good material to work with when we get into more dynamic poses as we will in a bit.

  • Notice how the bottom of the ear sits about at the bottom of the nose there. And so the

  • ear is sitting in that middle third. And by keeping it well away from the top of the skull

  • and well away from the bottom of the skull, bottom of the chin/face, it gives us that

  • sense that were looking more or less straight on to this figure, maybe slightly on top.

  • So anyway, the placement of the ear in the middle from left to right, in the middle region

  • from top to bottom, gives us a sense that that’s a solid basic profile.

  • Alright, here’s a Tiepolo. Here you can see the simple construction idea never really

  • taken any farther. Weve got mom here with a simple egg shape, but since she’s off

  • axis, she’s in a three-quarter view, then were getting a little bit of the skull

  • back here. So let’s go back, look at that again and see exactly what our friend is doing

  • here. There is the center line of those features. Here’s the eyebrow line or eyeline, the

  • T idea. Notice how when we start getting into these perspectives, were starting to get

  • off axis from a perfect front or a perfect profile then our T starts to get into dynamic

  • positions. The head is tilting down so the T tilts. Were underneath and in a three-quarter

  • view to the eyebrow line and eyeline. The eyebrow and eyeline tilt up, and so that T

  • throws off into a dynamic position.

  • So let’s look at that one more time. There are several ways we can do this. We can draw

  • our sailboat shape, and we can take in the whole head. Notice how were going back

  • here. There it is there. Or, we could have started with this center line going back and

  • then add on a little bit more, or start outside and put the center line. Either way is fine.

  • Then the eyebrow line or eyeline. I usually do the eyebrow line because you get those

  • arching eyebrows. There is a clear, drawn-in shape of the eyebrow rather than the little

  • vaguer sense of where the eye is. So I use that to place it and then work off your proportions

  • from there. The other way we could have done this, of course, is the egg shape. I do not

  • want to do an egg shape for the whole thing. That’s too crude. That’s simple but not

  • characteristic. There are two shapes going on here. As soon as we move from a front view

  • towards a profile or even to a back view, were going to see the face shape and the

  • skull shape, so we need a construction strategy that shows both. So I want the face shape

  • as a mask. It can be rounder or squarer. His is much rounder. Other artists would make

  • it squarer. Center line is right through there. Eyebrow line is right there. eyeline if you

  • wanted that too is right there. Then were going to add on a little bit of the egg of

  • the skull. Notice as soon as we do that were getting that gesture down for the face, gesture

  • back for the skull that we have to have. Let’s look at our little baby character here. Here

  • weve got the face tilting this way, eyebrow line, center line. Sometimes it helps to do

  • the construction lines first. Sometimes it’s better. Probably usually it’s better to

  • do the big constructed face, gesture, structure. There it is there. Then we add the center

  • line on. We end up with that sailboat shape. It’s very pointy. It’s got those corners.

  • So maybe because this is a baby were going to start with the egg of the skull first cause

  • that kind of dominates. Were in a three-quarter view, and the head is tilted down. So we have

  • that strong egg shape. Then we add on a rounder mask here, picking up our construction lines

  • on that like so. The eyes sit in here like that, and you can mark off.

  • Let’s do it one more time. There is the skull shape. Here is the face shape. Here

  • we can complete it through or leave it open-ended, whichever way is appropriate. Since we don’t

  • have a hairline, it’s a little easier to imagine it as open-ended maybe. Here is the

  • center line, eyebrow line in there. You can see a little bit of the ear here. Right there

  • is a little bit of the ear.

  • Now notice, as you have already have, I’m sure, the simple conception of this. He’s

  • just breaking down ideas. This is a sketch for a painting, some mural painting that was

  • going to be up on some high wall or ceiling. Notice that he’s conceiving of this. This

  • is going to be this beautifully finished realized little baby Jesus, beautifully lit, beautifully

  • rendered, and he’s just starting this out as an egg. Notice that the whole conception of that skull if we remove

  • it from the face construction and from the idea that it is a head, it’s just an egg.

  • If I were to draw just an egg and then light that egg with a light source that’s equivalent

  • to what we have here it would be very close to that. It would do that or it would do that

  • or it would do this. It would do some version, give or take a variation of what we see there.

  • And so drawing the basic shadow shape of the forehead throwing the features into shadow

  • in this case in any way that’s anywhere close to a simple egg on a table is going

  • to be what well start with. And that’s the secret of making things up out of your

  • head. That’s a secret of animating things, conceiving things as so simple of an idea

  • that we can render quite detail on it. We can move it in space. We can redesign it,

  • re-imagine it into more dynamic, into alien eggs and monstrous eggs and heroic eggs and

  • all that kind of stuff for design.

  • Let’s go back to our figure one more time of the female. We can see how again the simple

  • conception of mommy here, the eye sockets marked out give us a clear sense of where

  • their eyes would be, but not very accurately. It’s just roughly true. This eye over here

  • maybe drifts out a little too far to the left. The nose gets a little darker here. The nose

  • is probably a little too short for it. Maybe even the face is a little long, but probably

  • not when you get the bottom of the chin here and the rest of this is the bottom plane,

  • the digastric plane in here.

  • But anyway, there are or could be quite a few errors there. We finish that off and maybe

  • we find should have had a little more skull especially with the cloaked head or the hairstyle.

  • All those little things. It should have been here but it ended up here. It shouldve

  • been here but it ended up over here. Those little variations aren’t a big deal, and

  • theyll be easily corrected as we move on through the drawing. As long as we get a fairly

  • close approximation it doesn’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to stress out about

  • that. Simple but characteristic. And as we simplify it and give it basic characteristics,

  • the variations then don’t matter. Those subtle inaccuracies don’t matter. They can

  • be corrected or left as a stylization or as a charming variation.

  • Okay, here we have another Raphael. A beautiful head, one of the most famous drawings ever

  • from the Renaissance. We can see again the simple conception. In fact, if you look at

  • just the hair you can see the hair itself is rather egg-like isn’t it? You know, we

  • can feel kind of eggs in here and little eggs in here, the Renaissance curls. A lot of roundness

  • there. Eggs were huge in the Renaissance because eggs suggested the Christian idea of rebirth.

  • And egg was a potential life coming into the world, and so it was used as a symbol for

  • the religious painting that these often were. This was a saint in this case, and so it fits

  • in with that.

  • Let’s go ahead and look for our shapes now. So we have a little bit of a dynamic position.

  • It’s a three-quarter view. That means were going to see a lot of face and some skull,

  • and were on top of the view. That means the skull is going to dominate the face so

  • were going to see even more skull and slightly less face. Now, when you get a very difficult

  • challenging position, and this isn’t extreme. Well get into that another chapter, but

  • it’s extreme enough when were starting out to give us trouble, or subtle enough that

  • if we throw off things a little bit we miss the point of the position, and it goes out

  • of whack for us.

  • So if we have a difficult position or a difficult shape, something that’s challenging, oftentimes

  • I’ll go to the construction lines first. Let me just mark this over here so I have

  • that to sample later. Here is that center line going down here. There is that construction

  • line, eyebrow line going here, with or without the eyeline. Take your pick. So sometimes

  • it’s best to start way. Then you can build on that sailboat shape. Notice how far off,

  • let’s say this is the actual chin without the beard. Notice how far off your constructed

  • tips mind end up. This should end up pretty nicely withinlet’s put it here. Pretty

  • nicely within the structure. These two tips can stick way out, and we can chop them off

  • later. Let’s do that again here. This can come out here. We can chop it off later like

  • so, just nip off those ends if we feel the need like that. So a sailboat shape orwe

  • always have several choices as long as it’s simple yet characteristic. Let’s say I’m

  • okay with not putting in the center line. I’m going to draw the mask of the face first.

  • I’m going to draw the simplified far side of the face. I’m going to draw the simplified

  • cheer into the jaw line in front of the ear. I’m going to draw a simplified hairline.

  • So just like it was a cut-out Halloween mask I’m going to conceive it of that. This is

  • going to get totally lost in this case in those bangs. But that’s okay, I need a shape

  • to work with. I could come way down here, but it’s nice if I can canonize my proportions

  • especially in the beginning. If I always draw theprobably a little lower here actuallyif

  • I always draw the hairline then I’m seeing a shape of the same proportion give or take

  • the character of the model and not something that’s radically changing because of an

  • accident of costuming. Then I can add my center line right on down through. I’m looking

  • to where the forehead meets the nose and where the lips meet the chin, anywhere in there.

  • If I’m off a little bit that’s okay; I can adjust it later or build around it later.

  • Then it won’t be a problem.

  • So there is my simplified idea. That’s a mask of the face. That’s not enough. We

  • need to get the shape of the skull. I’m going to look for the shape of the skull without

  • the fullness of the hair. Notice I have a lot of room for error. I can be down in here,

  • feel okay. It could be all the way out to the hair, do just fine because the hair will

  • cover it. I’d like to get fairly accurate, though. Not because the skull matters in this

  • instance because it will be covered by the hair, but because it will matter oftentimes

  • in how well I fit that neck in construction. So there is that hourglass idea of the neck.

  • Let’s get rid of this little pinch. Well save that for a later structural talk. There

  • is that hourglass shape. Then I put in the ear at this point because it’s going to

  • help hide that binding transition between mask of face and hair. It’s going to show

  • us how they fit together, and in this casenow if we come back and add our construction lines.

  • Maybe we didn’t do the center line. Let’s do the center line. Now let’s do the eyebrow

  • line. Notice that the center line of the face and the eyebrow line of the features are all

  • on the front of our shape. So if we continued that around with a bucket idea. Oops, let me adjust that

  • a little bit. We put a bucket on the head. Notice that the eyebrow line follows the front,

  • in this case the right side of the bucket. And the ear, if theyre lined up pretty

  • well, as they are, follows a left contour, left side of that bucket. Notice in that tilting.

  • Also notice it’s almost always better to screw up the tilt of that bucket by making

  • it tilt too much. Cause what’s our real problem here. The real problem is to fight

  • off this flat paper or flat canvas were on and give the idea, the illusion of three-dimensional

  • form of tilt and tips and facing dimensions.

  • So if we know we have to fight that flatness to get the illusion, to the get the idea,

  • I’d rather overdo the idea a little bit to make it more exciting. If I’m doing a

  • comedy as a film, as a story, I’d rather it be too funny rather than not funny enough.

  • You can always back off later. But if it’s not funny that’s tough. Tough to fix it

  • later. So if youve got a real flat drawing it’s tough to push into a three-dimensional

  • form. But if your form is a little too three-dimensional, tilting a little too much, it’s easier to correct.

  • Notice what’s going to happen. When I pick up mybring this all the way across here.

  • We can take the hairline and let that be roughly the top of the tube. Then notice that tubular

  • idea starts to break down when we add that skull going back. We don’t get a good sense

  • of the gesture going back. We don’t get a good sense of how the back of the skull

  • finishes against the back of the face there. But if we continue that down notice the consistency,

  • and this is one of the powers of using simple constructed forms. Once you have that construction

  • conception, the tilt of the bucket, then that is going to carry through on all the features

  • and affect all the features. Notice how all the features track that same tilted construction

  • line on the front of our tube. Not the tip of the nose, but from nostril to nostril,

  • from corner of the mouth to corner of the mouth, or the very front of the lip or front

  • of the tip of the nose. The eyeline, eyebrow from arch to arch. Bottom of the chin and

  • even in this case the beard is tracking that.

  • So we have all, and even the bangs, the hairstyle tracks it with whatever little variations

  • there are. Theyre all tracking that same tilt, and that’s what gives that dramatic,

  • dynamic illusion of that head in that lovely position. The ear is all alone isn’t it?

  • That’s one of the struggles well have. We have all this feature stuff on the front

  • of the face to build nice three-dimensional positioning, but we only have the ear on the

  • side to do it, at least apparently so. Were going to have to work at that to get that

  • sense. But eyebrow to ear does a lovely job of beginning the idea of that tilt. Then theyll

  • be other things like the jaw line. As it drifts up it’s still giving a sense, an exaggerated

  • sense, but especially that corner. We get into that a little bit later.

  • But that gives us a sense of that.

  • Notice that we could have drawn this any number of simple ways. We could have drawn and egg

  • and played all this stuff along the curvature of the egg. Jaw line comes up. Swing all the

  • way around from the eyebrow line over to the ear. Notice that that egg, though, is exceptionally

  • unsatisfying for the skull. Weve cut off all the back of the skull. Weve left it

  • out. So we’d want to add another egg going back so we get that drift back and get the

  • fullness of the back of the skull. Then it accepts our lovely hairstyle there and also

  • makes for a much more satisfying connection for the neck and body below it.

  • And then we could also make it boxier. We could make it a boxy idea this way. And then all the features here,

  • which sat on the front of the box and even the bangs. The ear would be on the side of

  • the box. And the hair and the skull would sit on the top of the box. Some way well

  • have to figure out and show the back of the box. Weve got choices, choices, choices.

  • It’s just a matter of which way you want to go. It’s a great exercise to do as I’m

  • doing here. Draw those old master drawings, either draw over them digitally or trace over

  • them with tracing paper and a book or sketch them as you look at them as I’m doing here.

  • Make those determinations. See which way Raphael leaned. Did he tend to use one idea or another?

  • Did he use all threetube, box, and ball?

  • Okay, here’s another Raphael. A more dynamic position. A little baby here, of course. You

  • can see now here again is that triangle idea here, or since it’s a round baby and the

  • egg is so important to the Renaissance, we can do as he did. Let the egg dominant. Since

  • the skull were in almost a full profile, and were on top of that head. There is

  • a slight three-quarter move to that profile. And were quite strongly on top of the head.

  • You can see how an accident in positioningthis happens oftentimes on an adult or child. When

  • you get on top of the skull quite a bit the bottom of your constructed skull here gets

  • very close to your eyebrow line. It gets very close to both cause that skull cap, the mass

  • of skull is dominating the face in this case. So we feel it there. Youre still going

  • to want to be very careful on its positioning. Youll see that quite a bit.

  • And then here is the mask of the face in here like so, and then the ear separates or makes

  • the transition between those two constructed ideas. Now when you have something very round

  • like this, especially if it’s in a dynamic position, it can throw things off. Let me

  • show you what I mean like that. So if I construct this, let’s say I constructed the skull

  • like this, and I look at that model on the model stand or that photograph on my drawing

  • board and I see that the eyebrow line really works nicely as the bottom of the skull, and

  • so I’ve sketched in. But look what happened here. I ended up putting my eye and eyebrow

  • line here. And it distorts things off. Let’s do this to make it worse. See how distorted

  • that is? That’s way out of whack. So rather than that, I’ll go ahead and construct it

  • the same way. I’ll use my eggs because that’s in character. It’s fairly easy to get big,

  • simple shapes in space. In this case we have that domination of the skull on top of the

  • face shape like this so it’s almost this kind of idea, you know, overlapping balls

  • in recession. So all that’s great to show the on-top-of-ness of our problem here.

  • So I go ahead and do that but then I come back and I construct more carefully the end

  • as a tubular idea or as the egg tilting in the correct position. I look to the nose and

  • features. Again, the danger of these features are theyre going around the other side

  • here. Going around the other side and we can’t see the other nostril. We can’t see the

  • other corner of the lip. And so we see this thing and this thing, and then eyebrow line

  • and this thing. Notice when I just draw what I see theyre all going in different angles

  • and it’s going to ruin the cohesion. Remember what we said before. You know, if we think

  • of it as a tube the hairline, the eyebrow line, the eyeline, the nose line, the mouth,

  • the chin; all of those track together. They have their own quirkiness. The eyebrows arch.

  • The eyelids maybe droop. The nose sticks out. The mouth changes expression and on and on

  • and on. But, theyre going to track nicely symmetrically from one side to the other.

  • So, again, let’s look at our Raphael and how to deceptive this can be. We look at these

  • features. None of them track. And so we think, well, he’s Raphael. He doesn’t make mistakes.

  • I’m going to go ahead and draw what I see. I’m going to draw this and this and this.

  • And your drawing is not going to look very good. So what Raphael did, and Raphael does

  • mistakes but he didn’t make it here. Everybody makes mistakes. In fact, the old masters that

  • make mistakes (and they did consistently)we call that their style. Theyve stylized

  • the world into a direction that is not exactly real, not true, no photographically true but

  • beautifully aesthetically true. Most importantly, whatever theyve done it’s consistent.

  • It’s the inconsistencies that screw you up.

  • So a Picasso might well make them all go off in different directions because Picasso is

  • after a different kind of truth, but this character here noticed that the eyebrows do

  • track. Here’s the center line. Even though he drew the tip of the nose out and we can’t

  • see that other nostril, it would be on this same construction line. It would be over here.

  • Same with the corner of the mouth. It would be on that same construction line. It would

  • be over here and the chin and such too. Go back one more time. Here is that center line

  • going down where the forehead meets the nose, where the lips meet the chin. Notice the eyebrow

  • lines. He works very hard to tilt that far eyebrow up. In fact, he repeats it with a

  • skull cap. Here is the casing of the skull intruding. That little baby skull dominates

  • the face in younger critters. Notice how those all track beautifully our construction line.

  • Let’s bring it over here and just make it a bucket. Notice how the skull tracks back

  • up here, here. High line tracks back up or eyebrow line, whichever. Nose goes its own

  • way. Lips go its own way. The chin tracks back up. Then we add the big egg of the skull

  • there. So back down here, chin tracks back up to that beautifully.

  • Now, let’s look at the other features that failed us. We can’t get the other nostril,

  • but the tip of the nose tracks back up. The lower lid of the eye tracks back up. The lip,

  • the kewpie doll curve of the lip even starts to track back up here, and the lower lip tracks

  • back up beautifully. Even when the accident of information throws us off at the wrong

  • angles he works very hard to find places where we come back to the right angles here and

  • here and here. And here and here and here. Even the hairline is tracking that way more

  • or less. So it does track beautifully but in a tricky way, in a not quite apparent way

  • to begin with. You could even see the tone over here tracking with a cheek contour over

  • here. That also tracks back up beautifully.

  • Alright, so here we have Normal Rockwell. But, of course, there is still going to be

  • these drawn truths that weve been talking about in the painting, or in a sculpture for

  • that matter. We can find them wherever. Norman Rockwell was famous for his characters. Each

  • personality, the male or the female, the young or the old, had a clear character to them.

  • They were middle America and they were personalities and even slightly caricatures he’d play

  • up. So when we look at this young boy, for example, were going to give a shape to

  • him that is specific and different than the shape of the adult who is giving him the lecture.

  • Notice what our friend Normal here has done. He has centered on a capsule shape. Notice

  • it could be a tipped over tube, that bucket idea this way. It’s tilted enough that the

  • back of the tube, the tip of the tube therelet’s do it over hereis not exactly right but

  • close to the final shape of the skull. He is still giving a little bit more back here

  • to give that movement down and back for our skull to face, the gesture of the skull going

  • back this way in perspective and the face going down slightly this way in a different

  • perspective. But in the linear idea they are almost in the same position.

  • Anyway, he is picking up a capsule shape, let’s call it. Down here probably. And so

  • the very shape, the simplified shape that he chose for the whole head started him out

  • simply like any of these choices would have, but more characteristic to his final thoughts,

  • to his final goal. And so by picking a shape that is specific, it’s less work. Think

  • of it as a sculpture. If we get a capsule shape of clay, that’s going to be a lot

  • less work to finish it out than if we got a big perfect spherical shape of clay. So

  • we want something that’s close to the finish line. That’s going to give us less work

  • to render it out. Things are going to fit better because well be able to see clearer

  • truths in proportion, and it’s going to connect better to the next form, the neck,

  • the shoulders, the hands in this case. All that kind of stuff.

  • Notice how were going to want to draw through the interruption of the hand and through the

  • distortion that the hand create to feel where that chin would be. Then it’s going to get

  • mucked up by the pressure of the hands against it. So then our construction lines are pulling

  • down this way, and he’s slightly mucked with those construction lines, hasn’t he?

  • The eyebrow here is a little higher, and the eyebrow over here is a little bit lower. That

  • throws our construction line off-tilt a little bit. It tilts it rather than being over here.

  • It’s falling down a little bit. He continues that with the nose. The nose is tilting off

  • axis a little bit. Then the lips come back pretty well, but the lower lip and chin get

  • tilted off. That’s because of that pressure of the hand. This hand is doing more work

  • because he’s trying to get away from this way. He doesn’t want to hear what’s being

  • told to him. And so the simple construction of the capsule now has been slightly distorted.

  • He has created a physical error in a sense to tell a story. So this whole thing is starting

  • to twist off. So it’s like the tube actually tilted away a little bit. I’m exaggerating

  • it. But he’s trying to get away from the lecture. Weve all felt that at different

  • times in our life. So he’s bringing that emotional truth into the constructed idea,

  • and that’s good picture making. That’s smart stuff.

  • So anyway, that gives us that sense. Let’s go back one more time now. I’ll just take

  • this out and pick this up. There it is there. Well just play this this way and this way

  • and this way and go back to the generic truth. When we draw the final eyebrow line, all that

  • kind of stuff, well give those distortions maybe if we were to take it that far. So there

  • we go there. Here’s a center line, of course, doing this. As I said, drifting off a little

  • bit. We can put that or save it for later again. Get a more refined truth, the distortion

  • idea later in the process. Stick with a more generic truth to begin with. Then let’s

  • look at our fellow over here. There is that construction. Notice how the ear is pushing

  • in a little closer to the front of the face, a little farther from the back of the skull.

  • That gives us the sense that he is turning away from us. He is facing into the canvas

  • to give his two cents to this young man who doesn’t want to hear it, wants to do anything

  • but hear it. So weve turned him in a little bit.

  • Notice what happens when that happens. There is a construction line there, and notice how

  • if we were to pick up the brow and the cheekbone and the cheek and the chin, notice how the

  • nose and lips are behind. Let’s play this up a little bit stronger. He’s done a lovely

  • thing. He’s even put the chin slightly behind that jowl area. Notice what that does for us.

  • Well see in later construction lessons how to do this exactly. Notice how the construction

  • line, this line can become the side plane, the corner between where the side of the head

  • sits and the front of the head sits. Let’s do a more dramatic construction.

  • See how that construction line there that just looked like it was the front the face, as

  • soon as we start to get in this dynamic that becomes the corner of the face. And now all

  • the features except the ear are around that corner hiding from us partially. Then the

  • ear is the only fellow, the only feature that is on that side plane. So it’s doing this.

  • Let’s change that color. It’s doing this going around the corner. Really important

  • interesting stuff. It was donelet’s do it one more time. It was done at a really

  • simple stage, real simple conception.

  • Let’s do this. Here is just cut off those features. Theyre going to go around the

  • corner eventually. But for now I’m just cutting them off because theyre complicated

  • and I’m getting the simple, yet characteristic truth, not the complicated truth at this point.

  • There it is there.

  • There is my gesture line to the face down that’s so important. Then I draw this shape on that.

  • Maybe that’s more comfortable for me. Then I build this all the way through from the

  • back. Or if I do that maybe that goofs me up and I think that’s the jaw line. Put

  • the ear in the wrong place. So instead I draw the mask of the face in front of the ear,

  • that sideburn area. Front of the ear down the jaw and chin and then the simplified hairline

  • in here. Then I draw the ear to show the dynamic transition between the two. Then I’m going

  • to come right back to the chin and I’m going to draw the simplified neck. Let’s make

  • it really long so we can see that. That neck is going away. I usually don’t bother doing

  • the tube construction because the neck doesn’t last long. Itll fall onto the shoulders

  • in ways that well see.

  • So there it is there. What was simple can become much more complicated. I can refine

  • that hairline as it zig-zags down in front of the ear. Refine the back of the hair. Add

  • the hairstyle on top of that skull construction and build from there.

  • So this is Manet. You can see with Manet, kind of the father of impressionism. He kind

  • of led the way from the more traditional looks of Delacroix and Ange and even Sargent and

  • that bunch to the impressionism, post-impressionism, all the wild things like Picasso that came

  • after. He was kind of that transition point. Very important character oftentimes not looked

  • at much by realists, people who like realistic things. They like Sargent more or Bouguereau

  • or those kinds of things. But he’s great because he simplifies things down. Yet, that

  • constructed truth is still there. We can see the egg. You can see how relatively flat the

  • rendering is. If we analyze we’d find that all the structures, the key structures are

  • still there. But he’s simplified and flattened it. Well just leave it at that for now.

  • It’s flat, simplified truth. Highly edited truth, but the key information is still right

  • there to be found.

  • So we can seelet’s do this, I guess. We can see that lovely egg idea. That doesn’t

  • work so well, does it? Let’s do that. That lovely egg idea is right there right in there. Keep in mind again that when

  • you draw the egg oftentimes you short shrift the skull, so rather than drawing more of

  • an elliptical egg. I harp on that because I make that mistake and I see a lot of other

  • people making that mistake. A lot of students in class make that mistake. So there it is.

  • Notice here we could end the constructed egg at the chin or include that fold under the

  • chin, that’d be the digastric plane, that bottom plane. You can do either one, or as

  • I’ve done here you can do both. Pick up both of those. Here is slightly tilted, slightly

  • tilted and slightly facing away. Not a perfect profile.

  • When I’m trying to get the positioning of any form that I’m constructing I’ll compare

  • it to a grid, to a perfect vertical and a perfect horizontal. If I don’t think of

  • that perfect vertical and horizontal I’ll tend to draw all my figures unless theyre

  • wildly dramatic in perfect vertical and horizontal. So if didn’t look to it I probably would

  • have drawn that like the Holbein, where it was straight on formal looking at me like

  • this, a T that’s perfectly standing up. This T wants to tilt over a little bit and

  • wants to face away a little bit. So were going to have the center line crowd this,

  • and were going to have the construction lines rise up slightly on the right. Since

  • we don’t have this dramatic position like we did on that little baby Raphael, we can

  • clearly see the construction lines. I’m just looking from the corner of the mouth

  • to the corner of the mouth. Some point on the nostril or the wings of the nose across.

  • Maybe the outside corners of the eye and the arch of the eyebrow. The hairline does whatever

  • it does, but you could see how we could come back for a moment here. Find it here or maybe

  • you don’t see it here, but maybe we find it here or a bump in the hairline we can track across.

  • If we could see both ears those would track across and so on. And then we’d build the

  • shape of the hair. When I do the hair shape I want to make it simple, yet characteristic,

  • so I give these kind of rounded, bun-like forms building on top of each other to make

  • it characteristic. Maybe even a little bit of there. Then the ear has been place in there

  • already. Notice because it’s a femalenow the collar is hiding it a little bit, but

  • because it’s a female young woman we notice, despite the costuming, that the neck is slightly

  • thinner than the jaw and certainly the face shape. Notice even through costuming, even

  • through interruptions notice where we see our construction lines. So you just find some

  • convenient point for a shoulder line, and you can do that sagging triangle on there

  • and get that connectivity of head and neck into shoulder girdle, shoulder construction

  • that will take us beautifully down into the torso and beyond.

  • Raphael again. He’s great. I like his drawings because he keeps things simple. He edits out

  • all the dimple lines and frown lines. Keeps it simple, idealized, and we can see those

  • shapes more clearly. And because he’s Renaissance he picks up these round shapes. You can see

  • the egg shapes and the arm here, all these little egg shapes and all the way through

  • the forms are eggs shapes. Alright, this one has a real danger to it, and it’s a danger

  • of getting, of just sticking with eggs in a way. Well see that more clearly explained

  • when we get into stronger construction. Were going to find that the more constructed something

  • is, the more architecture we want to put into it, the more dramatic positioning of forms,

  • one form overlapping another or the forms themselves being in dramatic perspectives

  • were way underneath or his three-quarter back view. Then boxing things out is going to be

  • very useful to us. The problem with the eggs is that they get so rounded that their position

  • kind of throws us sometimes. And so notice that the wrap here, the head wrap fits like

  • this. When we look to that and then we do that face. We get that dropping skull idea

  • again that goofs us up. It doesn’t look right.

  • Notice the ear is nice and low. Dropping skull idea again that goofs us up. It doesn’t

  • look right. Notice the ear is nice and low, getting close to the bottom of the face, farther

  • away from the top. That tells us were slightly on top of this head, maybe about this much.

  • But I need to feel that skull, make sure I can get a skull, let’s put it all the way

  • in there correctly. Remember, we need to have it more than just a right angle. It should

  • open up a little bit. Now when we get way on top of this let’s turn it into a box.

  • Slightly more dramatic position box. Notice that this does tighten up this curve. The

  • right angle construction starts to distort into a pinching angle. Now the back of the

  • skull rises up a little bit, and that fights that. But that position does kind of reinforce

  • that tightening up of that angle, but we don’t want to do it too much.

  • Here’s what I mean. Here’s the construction line of the face. Here isyou can see that

  • with this little sketching here, the bump down in here. There is the skull right there.

  • Let me do it again in a dark line. That’s what were seeing there. Notice the difference

  • now. Let me do it one more time. Construction line of the face. There is the skull in its

  • correct position. He didn’t screw up. How about that? Then the ear sits here, that transition

  • between the two. Notice that this bumps in here a little bit. This digastrics plane actually

  • even feels like it goes behind the ear and it does, but the jaw itself is always in front

  • of the ear, so make sure youre aware of that. You don’t want to attach the talking

  • jaw back here somehow. Again, that ear does wonderful work for us, doesn’t it? It shows

  • by getting close to the front of the face it shows that were turning away here, turning

  • away. The face is turning away. And by dropping down from the top of the head it shows that

  • were slightly on top that position. Then the head wrap helps. Even though it’s going

  • its own direction it’s still wrapping around the perspective of that tubular idea, that

  • on-top-of-ness idea. Well learn more about that again as we get into more sophisticated

  • positions. Here’s that neck going back beautifully. We have a little bit of that bottom plane

  • going back. Here would be the other side of the neck if we could see through our construction.

  • Or shoulder line is in here going into deep space this way. Then we build on top of that.

  • So we only get a bare sense of that sagging triangle idea in deep perspective.

  • Alright, so here we have Tiepolo and we have a back view and slightly underneath. Of course,

  • in our back view the skull dominates. You can see this growth pattern gives us a sense

  • of the back of the skull. If we were to track this down the center line of the back of the

  • skull, the center line of the neck we follow the spine. That takes us all the way down.

  • That spine becomes a wonderful center line for gauging that facing dimension, which way

  • is it turning. You could also see the ears. This ear is outside the contour of the constructed

  • head. This ear is going to be inside the constructed head with the face that we haven’t done.

  • So let’s pull that back for a second and do it again. We can see now weve got the

  • gesture of the face going down this way. The problem we have is all those features are

  • missing. It just feels like you just got floated away from your doc and youve got nothing

  • to hold on to when you don’t have those features. So weve got to work more carefully

  • here. What I’m going to do is feel the neck, and the neckyou can feel your own neck,

  • and youll find that the neck comes from right behind the ear. The actual muscle is

  • called the sternocleidomastoid muscle. That’s what creates that tubular shape of the neck

  • from a front and back or three-quarter view. You get into the side view, and then that

  • sternocleidomastoid is inside the contour. Well use it from there in different ways

  • that well see. But it doesn’t create the contour.

  • And so here is our nice bent tube of a neck coming from off the ears. The face is outside

  • that. We just see it on this side. We don’t see it on this side. Then we have the construction

  • line. The shoulder line here tilts this way. When I see hunching shoulders like this, and

  • theyre hunching partly because it’s a figure well up above us which is typical of

  • Tiepolo because he did a lot of murals on the ceiling. He wanted to give the illusion

  • that those figures were above us. So oftentimes we get that underneath curvature like a tube.

  • And so I would go ahead and draw a hunching line for the shoulders. Let me take that off

  • to be clear, a hunching line for the shoulders. Then there is the shrugging muscle on that

  • shrugging muscle. Notice that the shrugging muscle comes inside the constructed neck,

  • and the neck is inside meaning on top of. The shrugging muscle is on top of the constructed

  • neck. The constructed neck is on top of the face, and we can’t see it over here. But

  • we get this stairstep. Let’s do it over here. Shrugging muscle is here. Neck is behind that. And face is behind that. So we

  • have this stacking of forms going away. Very important from the back view. Then the ears.

  • This ear is inside the constructed contour. This ear is outside the constructed contour.

  • That does most of the work. We have that hair pattern that he has added in, but that is

  • a secondary detail. The ears really are doing most of the work to show that were in a,

  • not perfect back view, but a slightly turn to the left back view. The other thing that

  • does the work is the asymmetry of seeing face over here and no face on this side.

  • So tricky stuff, isn’t it? We have to slow down and work that out. Eventually it becomes

  • intuitive and you can go after it. But in the beginning it’s tricky. Doing tracing,

  • constructions as I’m doing here is a great way of working out those truths, to figure

  • out the nuances, the little things that you wouldn’t think of if you didn’t have to

  • draw it, but are crucial for our audience or lay people, our viewers to understand it

  • when they see it.

  • Let’s stop there with our old masters. Then were going to come back with some drawing

  • session exercises for you and for me to join in on. So I’ll see you momentarily.

  • Coming up now is our timed pose section. I want you to go ahead and draw the head from

  • the reference that were providing. Itll be timed, but if you go a little over or you

  • finish a little quicker, that’s fine. What I want to do is see that basic head construction

  • done. Go ahead and give it a shot and see how it goes for yourself.

  • Now it’s my turn to work with the timed pose. So I’m going to go ahead and do my

  • basic construction based on the reference, and well see how it goes.

  • Alright, so hopefully youve drawn your own set of drawings. Now I’m going to go

  • ahead and draw. You can watch me. You can draw along with me, and I’ll give you my

  • own tips and pointers as we go along.

  • I should tell you my materials now. I’m using just a fountain pen. This happens to

  • be a Waterman Paris, a kind of a midrange or low-range fountain pen and just a sepia

  • brown ink. I’m also using Faber-Castell, and these are just a sanguine tone. Any kind

  • of brown range. These happen to be 9201-192, and it’s a nice soft brown, kind of orange-brown.

  • Alright, so now it’s my turn. So I’m going to draw the biggest, simplest, most characteristic

  • shape that I can. I’m working about an inch and a half to two inches in real size, whatever

  • it is on your screen. That’s what it is to me. It can be down to about an inch. It

  • can be up three inches. If you get too big it just takes a lot of time to lay it out.

  • You get too small. It’s too much minutia. Every little move becomes a big deal on a

  • big head, so the eyes can get out of whack quickly. Sometimes you want to kind of plot

  • out exactly where the features or roughly where the features are to get a sense of whether

  • it’s working for you. Notice I’m drawing several marks for every one mark. I’m making

  • sure the head connects into the neck. You can even take it into the shoulder line. And

  • don’t feel like you have to finish. Just pick out

  • as much as you need to in the time you have.

  • Okay, here we have a three-quarter view. Just for the heck of it, I’m going to start with

  • the center line of the features and the eyebrow line. And then build around it. I’m going

  • to draw the mask of the face since it dominates the positioning of this head. But any order

  • that works for you is the correct order. In this case I noticed the ear is a little bit

  • lower, more towards the eyeline. Now I’m going to come in and refine the hairline to

  • make sure it rings true for the mask of the face. Of course, as youre drawing you can

  • stop it. Go back and do it several times to work it out. But don’t get any more detail

  • than this, just roughly the shapes that you need. And I’m going to say, you know, I’m

  • liking what I’m doing. I just want to clean that jawline up. I’m going to cheat and

  • steal five, ten, 20 more seconds. Nobody is ever going to know. You won’t be downgraded.

  • The New Masterspolice won’t show up at your door. Just go ahead and do that.

  • But don’t spend 20 minutes on it.

  • Here we have that sailboat shape. I’m going to take it back almost as far as I go down

  • or as far, anywhere in there because her hair style will make the correction. It’s not

  • quite a perfect profile. I’m going to lay in a little bit of that center line. I did

  • quite a bit of work with the features there to get a sense of how far down I want to go

  • with that mask of the face and how far back I want to go. Sometimes I’ll even kind of

  • feel eye socket, cheekbone, sideburn area so that I can be more clear on where that

  • ear sits. Feeling that nice digastric plane that is crucial when giving volume to that

  • mask of the face.

  • Okay, here we go. This is more of a perfect profile, but weve gone slightly around

  • the other side this time, so were going to have a slight recession of those front

  • features, all the front plane of the face. That means the ears can get a little closer.

  • If I’m going to screw up it’s better to get a little closer yet. I can feel where

  • the eyebrow and eyes sit in here, nose, mouth, just marking off the information, not defining

  • it, not analyzing it. Just positioning a few of the little things so I have a better confidence

  • in the big things. Sometimes I’ll even lay in a couple of loose lines like that, and

  • I’ll let the audience choose. Is it here? Is it here? Is it here? Is it here? And youll

  • decide which the best answer is and bail me out. Sometimes that’s a, you can lay in

  • a couple. You don’t want to do that everywhere or youre just committing and youre not

  • learning. But every once in a while you can lay in a couple of those little marks and

  • let the audience help you.

  • Now were getting on top of the head. That means the skull will dominate the face so

  • maybe I’ll go ahead and draw the skull shape. If there is a part down the center of her

  • hairline it would run in here. The face is going to be shorter than it normally would

  • be. It’s foreshortening, so literally getting shorter visually, just not actually. Youre

  • not going to be sure where it’s at. So you make your best guess. You build some of the

  • secondary detail, the hairline again. Here is the ear. The ear gets a little foreshortened

  • too. Eyebrow line, eyeline, nose, mouth, chin, neck.

  • So were not trying to make these pretty drawings. I’m going to start with a different

  • procedure this time. Were just trying to get the basic big stuff, the big information,

  • the big construction stuff. Were framing in the house. Were not decorating it. And

  • sometimes youll come up with some really lovely little moments in the drawing even

  • at this stage. That’s great, but that’s not the point. The point is to learn to see,

  • to learn to analyze, to mark down the key important things, making the choices on prioritizing.

  • What has to be there as opposed to what would be fun to have there? What would be cool or

  • neat or beautiful? Neat shows my age, I guess. I shouldn’t say neat. Rad. How’s that?

  • Or it should be phat. Alright. Sometimes you might finish a little early. That’s fine

  • too. You don’t have to keep going. But there are always things you could do, getting secondary

  • forms after you get the primary forms. Going back and double checking those primary forms

  • a second time. Maybe pushing it a little bit farther than it is in the reference to make

  • an aesthetic point or to play up a lovely feature, all that kind of stuff.

  • Here is the profile again. It comes down. Well play out this whole big shape.

  • I'll draw it like it’s a flat profile, and then

  • I’ll come back over it and feel the constructed idea.

  • Notice how I’m doing the eyebrow line this way.

  • The chin line this way. I’m exaggerating them to get that on

  • top of the box idea. And doing something like this in a difficult position early on you

  • might spend all the first minute just getting half of this as far as I am here. Don’t

  • feel like you have to finish. Draw decisive. I’ll draw fast so that I’m making clean,

  • crisp motions. I’ll draw fast so it encourages me to get the big ideas and ignore the little

  • ideas. I won’t draw fast because I’m out of control and desperate to finish. Make sure

  • youre drawing the speed that works for you, not the speed that somebody else is doing

  • and that you wish you could do.

  • Alright, now were on top so the skull dominates, and were getting behind the head. And so

  • the skull dominates even more so were going to have less face showing, and were going

  • to have the face receding into foreshortened position here, more like this so that ear gets very, very close to the front

  • of the face. Better to be a little too close. And the ear gets lower. Better to be too low.

  • The eye socket—I’ll do a little bump there because we can’t see the eyes too well.

  • There and the nose all sit very high. And if you could see a part down the center of

  • the hair, and you can kind of, where the hair is being gathered and pulled back and tends

  • to fall down there. Go ahead and pick that up.

  • Let me make a real quick point about this for a moment. Notice what would happen if

  • I did the same thing and then did nose and the eyelashes, and maybe you could see some

  • lips in there. It’s going to have the silhouette maybe that’s very accurate to the, like

  • a shadow on the wall, but it’s going to look flat because it’s going to take the

  • nose and the lips and whatever else, part of the eye or eyebrow you see, and it’s

  • going to take it from the front plan e way over here and bring it around to the side

  • plane. It’s going to kill that corner and just flatten it out. So we want to make sure

  • that in our constructed beginning here, notice how I’m going to make it dark here. Notice

  • how the cheekbone and the forehead and eye socket bumps, but creates one continuous line.

  • Sometimes itll break a little bit around the chin, that line, like this. That’s fine

  • to show or not show. But then we want the nose and all the other features. There is

  • no lip showing in this case. But if they were, the lips as a line behind and I actually break

  • them, bottom of the nose, bottom of the lip, let’s say. Here’s the chin and here is

  • the ear in here. I actually break them away from the line so they are kind of ghosted

  • back. I usually draw the bottom plane where a light source would show. If we shaded this

  • egg like that the light would hit the top and it would get shadow on the bottom. I’m

  • showing the shadow side, the darker side that would be the most visible because it’s catching

  • dark shadow on this white paper. So I do all I can to kind of visually push that back,

  • break it up, separate it away and keep it just continuous throughout.

  • Okay, fuller back view. I’m going to draw the skull that I know is there and the ear.

  • I always draw the front of the ear first so I know just how close it is, the ear is getting.

  • When you get well behind that ear I’m doing a little double line. You can take it into

  • whatever you see of the rest of the ear, or you can just keep it as a double line. That

  • shows the thickness. Again, a corner from the back of the head to the side of the head

  • that ear is showing. So pick up that. The cheekbone is way up here. This pulls down

  • here, and the skull, if there is not hair or short hair, let’s do that so it looks

  • like it’s just a skull with a face. It would look something like that.

  • In this last one I drew I drew really partly, I began with a skull shape and then I quickly

  • went to the hair shape. In this one I did the skull shape mainly because it’s good

  • practice and I wanted to show you, but what I would have done in my own drawing is I would

  • have just drawn the whole hair, making sure I allowed for a full mass of skull in there

  • and then picked up the bun. So I’m actually drawing the hairstyle. And that hairstyle

  • oftentimes I’ll look for, let’s do that, where the top becomes the back right there.

  • You can see here how this speeds up, comes down here. That’s suggesting that top and

  • back. Anytime we can do that it’s going to give a little bit more volume. Itll

  • make sure I don’t cut off that skull a little bit. I kind of punch it out just a bit. So

  • you have your choice there. But do some practice where youre drawing the full skull through

  • the interruption or the hat or the hairstyle and then build that fashion,

  • that costuming top of that.

  • Okay, now were underneath so now this egg shape or capsule shape is going to get shorter.

  • And well go over this carefully. Well do a whole section where we deal with difficult perspectives.

  • But as this goes up and away, were underneath it. All these distances, eyebrow, the forehead

  • and such are going to get shorter on us. And so you have to be a little more careful in

  • your positioning of things to make sure youre respecting that new visual, most especially

  • how short the nose gets underneath. Well figure out exactly why that’s the case at

  • another time. Notice because of the awkward and difficult. And this is kind of an awkward

  • view when youre underneath because that awkward view and the difficult view I’m

  • drawing. This whole section is the underside of the nose. I’m drawing the whole circle

  • of the lips to feel the full volume of the lips. Later I’ll rough out more detail as

  • I need to. But I’m getting those full volumes so I can break this space up and be more clear

  • on where things end. Then I’ll find the bottom of the chin and the rest of this that

  • I lay in more or less. I’ll give it some shadow here. That’s that digastric plane

  • again. That makes sure that it doesn’t look like a Halloween mask. So it’s really important

  • whenever you see underneath the head that you show some of that mass of the face going

  • back to the neck, that bottom plane of the face. Then there is that. I didn’t get any

  • chance to do the rest of it. That would have been fine. In this case I’m going to do

  • it just to point out when you get underneath look how low the ears get way down here. Notice

  • especially in the underside view of the face like this almost always you end up drawing

  • just the mask of the face and not the full skull with whatever hairstyle is going on.

  • So make sure that you add that back in.

  • Okay, three-quarter profile, and were way underneath it again. If you think of it as

  • a box or as a tube notice how this front side to her, which is our left side, rises way

  • up and then moves off along. This comes around slower. This comes around quickly but then

  • changes direction. That first movement where all the features are except for the ear is

  • going way up. You can’t underestimate that, really. So better to make it much deeper than

  • it really is than to make it less than it is. Here is the root of the nose in here,

  • the mouth in here, the chin in here. Notice again it’s a difficult view so I take more

  • time to work out the details. Always take that little extra to get some of the neck

  • connection there. Okay, in this case I’m going to draw the whole mask of the face as

  • an egg. It just feels egg-like to me so I’m going to do that. Then I’m going to lay

  • on my center line to show it’s facing. My eyebrow line to show how it’s tilting in

  • and out of the page, and then the ear is way back here some place. Nose, mouth, chin. Notice

  • even the chin goes in this same direction. Digastric plane tucks under. You can even

  • give it a little bit of tone there to mark it off if you want, although we haven’t

  • talked about how to do that. You can kind of code it.

  • Okay, so that’s my time on that, but notice what I did with the last few seconds. I went

  • back and kind of touched each of these areas or as many areas as I had time to do to make

  • sure they all related together. Because otherwise you tend to kind of draw this, and then you

  • draw this, and then you draw this and you draw this. You kind of scan across but youve

  • never taken a look at the whole until you stand up and walk away from your piece. So

  • I want to keep a process of where I’m juggling all the balls at once. I lay in my construction

  • lines here, and then I go over here to some other constructed shape, but then I compare

  • that shape back to those construction lines. This to this, but this to this. These to this

  • and this to that. This over here to this down here. There are relationships throughout.

  • You can find angles playing off that you can pick up. There are all sorts of ways to feel

  • your relationships back and forth. So as you do your art constantly juggle. Keep juggling.

  • Come back, find a little mark, maybe add a little more detail, but just to bring you

  • back to that place so you can compare that to something else over here and this to something

  • over here, and youre constantly rhythmically relating. I always think of an orchestra conductor

  • who is drawing in the brass section against percussions and the woodwinds and each instrument

  • in each section is playing with and against and through the others. So there is this mighty

  • composition. This dance of ideas, forms, sounds.

  • That eyebrow line to ear is just invaluable when youre trying to plot things out in

  • dynamic position. Finding the chin to jaw line back in front of the ear, that sideburn

  • area is going to help us feel that underneathness. Well get a better handle on that when we

  • get into our second section on intermediate construction.

  • Okay, so here were way underneath and behind so the ear is going to crowd the front of

  • the face and crowd the top of the head. Much better to overdo it. In other words, push

  • it too high up, too far forward. You can use that hairline. It’s always a great way to

  • kind of measure a sideburn over to the eyebrow, eye socket area. A great way to measure to

  • make sure this distance is about right. There is that full jaw of hers. Here is the skull

  • shape in here. And here is the hairstyle building out from that and adding to that. Okay.

  • Okay, that’s our lesson for the basic head structure. I hope it gave you some good pointers

  • to work with, some new information. I hope some of the assignments helped kind of codify

  • that information, make sure it’s going to work in practice and not just in theory. As

  • all of these lessons go, watching them more than once is a great idea. Go back to them

  • over and over again. This is tough information. There are a lot of fine points there that

  • you may not pick up the first time. You can always use more practice, as we all can, of

  • course. So go ahead and look at that a few times, but when youre ready go on then

  • to our next lesson. Our next lesson will be intermediate head construction.

  • I'll see you there.

Hi, I'm Steve Huston, and I'm excited today to bring you a free head drawing lesson. Over

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