Head Construction Practice
3yr
@vvvz
After finishing the first part of Marco Bucci's Understanding and Painting the Head course, I wanted to try applying that knowledge by constructing a head. Here's my attempt!
Feel free to critique and let me know if there are any planes that I missed or drew incorrectly!
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3yr
Hi there, @vvvz! I just wanted to jump in and reinforce @Kristian Nee's awesome critique about looking out for putting the features within a cohesive structure when drawing the head. On that note, @Marco Bucci's Understanding And Painting The Head course has a lesson on Assembly which could be worth taking some time to review!
As additional suggestions, here's a few extra resources you might like to check out in case you want to tackle this issue from other (equally helpful) points of view:
. How to Draw the Head from Any Angle - In this lesson, @Stan Prokopenko discusses the Loomis method to establish the proportions and perspective of the head. He also brings some extra examples and a recap in Quickly Draw Heads with the Loomis Method – Part 1 and Draw ANY Head Type with the Loomis Method – Part 2 - Or, if you really wanna invest some time into getting deeper into the head, I'd suggest perhaps checking out the whole Portrait Drawing Fundamentals course.
. The Abstraction – Reilly Method for Caricature Drawing - This is a caricature lesson, but just take a look at least at the excerpt from 1:40 to 2:40, where @Court Jones shows a diagram of rythmic lines that can help with structure of the basic head (a.k.a. the Reilly Method).
. There is this lesson by Mark Westermoe at New Masters Academy with also explains the Reilly Method, but in a more traditional way: https://www.nma.art/v3/course-catalog/courses/115672/?lesson=82861 If you can't access the lesson, you can also try looking up "Reilly abstraction" on YouTube and you'll probably find several videos and tutorials by other artists which cover pretty much the same kind of basics, so maybe either of these alternatives could be useful.
Hope this helps!
Keep it up \o/
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3yr
Hey vvvz! Good job! You're getting the hang of this. I can tell you're really starting to understand the rule of thirds and how to place features.
What I'd say is that though your placement is correct enough, you could improve your structure. For example, on yours the eyebrow, nose, mouth and chin are all on separate axis. I did a really quick draw over of what I'm talking about. You can see in the plum lines I placed over the reference that the nose, mouth and ears are all off.
On another note, you could also improve how your lines flow. In the third picture I've attached, this is how I would go about drawing this. I would make a big envelope to encompass the shape, but also something to keep the gesture. Then from there in the forth picture I would add some structure.
I think it would help your drawings to try to draw more with longer flowing lines, rather than trying to make it more structural.
Hope this helps!