Drawing Faces
presents
Drawing faces
Learn How to Draw a Face with Attitude, How to Draw Eyes with Impact and How to Draw Lips with Structure
Drawing faces
Depicting features is only the beginning. putting life into a heaD Drawing requires assimilating it with the rest of the boDy, capturing an attituDe—anD much more.
How to Draw Dynamic HeaDs here are many ways to keep your figure drawings lively, fresh, and dynamic. But there is one sure way to destroy an active and energetic drawing: by plopping a stiffly rendered, ham-fisted head on top of an otherwise nicely drawn figure. Too many artists, perhaps fearful of their subjects, treat the head as if it were nothing more than an inventory of features or an empty, blocklike shape, void of life, sometimes sitting straight and rigidly on its neck, contradicting the underlying gesture of the body and looking like a lifeless lollipop. This eons-old challenge of how to put more life and energy into drawings, paintings, and sculptures of the human head is easily answered once you get beyond the fear and the seeming complexity of the subject. I will outline many solutions throughout this article appropriate for both the beginner and advanced artist. Some of the cures will seem deceptively simple. Others will reach beyond the obvious, studying the head from all sides, including top and bottom. And just about all of them will somehow involve the overall figure, with the head serving as the crown of the magnificent machine that is the human body.
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by D an Gheno
Friedrich Karl, Prince of Prussia by adolf menzel, 1863, gouache over graphite, highlighted with white, 115⁄8 x 9. notice how, from behind, the nasolabial furrow obscures some of the nose and mouth and seems to unite optically with the cheekbone and rim of the eye. this connection helps to push the nose back and, along with several other overlapping shapes, reinforces the roundness of the underlying egg-shaped head structure.
this content has been
Drawing faces
Learn How to Draw a Face with Attitude, How to Draw Eyes with Impact and How to Draw Lips with Structure
Drawing faces
Depicting features is only the beginning. putting life into a heaD Drawing requires assimilating it with the rest of the boDy, capturing an attituDe—anD much more.
How to Draw Dynamic HeaDs here are many ways to keep your figure drawings lively, fresh, and dynamic. But there is one sure way to destroy an active and energetic drawing: by plopping a stiffly rendered, ham-fisted head on top of an otherwise nicely drawn figure. Too many artists, perhaps fearful of their subjects, treat the head as if it were nothing more than an inventory of features or an empty, blocklike shape, void of life, sometimes sitting straight and rigidly on its neck, contradicting the underlying gesture of the body and looking like a lifeless lollipop. This eons-old challenge of how to put more life and energy into drawings, paintings, and sculptures of the human head is easily answered once you get beyond the fear and the seeming complexity of the subject. I will outline many solutions throughout this article appropriate for both the beginner and advanced artist. Some of the cures will seem deceptively simple. Others will reach beyond the obvious, studying the head from all sides, including top and bottom. And just about all of them will somehow involve the overall figure, with the head serving as the crown of the magnificent machine that is the human body.
T
by D an Gheno
Friedrich Karl, Prince of Prussia by adolf menzel, 1863, gouache over graphite, highlighted with white, 115⁄8 x 9. notice how, from behind, the nasolabial furrow obscures some of the nose and mouth and seems to unite optically with the cheekbone and rim of the eye. this connection helps to push the nose back and, along with several other overlapping shapes, reinforces the roundness of the underlying egg-shaped head structure.
this content has been