Study group - head and neck 1

This month, my figure drawing class tackles that great beast: the head. The stated goal here is to push forward our figure drawing — not portraiture. This anatomy unit is not targeting likeness. It is about making a form that is recognizable as a head, and giving it some directionality. Where is the subject looking?

There were two phases to this week’s efforts. Because you’re not getting to see the references, the results will be a little abstract. In phase one, we made spheres with bisecting lines to describe the center line of the face and the brow ridge. In phase two, we start building up a simplified version of the Loomis head, with just the front face planes the the flattened side-planes.

This was an interesting challenge. I think this approach will be the key to making faces work at whole-figure distance, something that’s been a problem for me to date. I think my results look all right, although I’m dubious about some of those side-planes. But that’s okay. I’ll keep working at it.