Ex.1 Facial Features
Using a biro, and small sketches I sketched images from my magazine. One eye is always easier to draw than a matching pair, so I was conscious to challenge myself and try them in pairs as well as singly. Even without other features it seems quite obvious that all but one set of these are female eyes. The makeup applied for these photoshoots emphasizes what otherwise might, at times, be more subtle differences. The biro allows for the creation of a large tonal range from dark to feint and wispy.
My next goal was to use a chunkier media and bigger images. I had enjoyed using the conte browns and charcoal pencils and wanted to add some of the conte and pastel sticks I had for Christmas. Some of these were drawn from the magazine, and others were from my own photos or internet images.
For these exercises I focused on images of males.
This range of media is so versatile at capturing facial features, and blends really well.
I returned to male and female eyes in a larger format with the chunkier media of conte sticks with detail being added with the conte pencils. This limited colour range is also sympathetic to this subject.
Derwent inktense pencils were used for the half face profile pictures. I had initially intended using more than one colour for each sketch and blending them with water. However, once I had created a tonal drawing with one colour I liked them just as they were and so resisted doing that. Although the tones are muted, I think it makes these drawings sensitive. The Inktense colours are so strong that I did not want to compromise the subtlety of these tones.
The profile outline on this second sketch is far too strong and uniform. I could have used a variety of line thickness and tone more effectively here. I will try to take this on board for subsequent head sketches.
The dark skin tone and the way light fell on to her face in this first, green drawing, made me really want to have a try at capturing that effect with these pencils. I was more conscious of line in this and the next sketch.
I was curious to see if I could capture the essence of a child’s face rather than an adult in a simple way. The relationship of the features of the face are more condensed and puffy and ‘raw’. The sparkling eyes particularly attracted me to this photo.
The next exercise comprised a series of 1 minute sketches of facial expressions by a model on Croquis café. For me the intention was just to work within the one minute time frame and see how much information I could show in my sketches. They are not necessarily anatomically correct, but it was a fun exercise to represent the spirit of each pose.
For the entire head image I wanted a face with lots of character. I knew it would most likely be a male head. Female faces, with make-up often have flawless faces, with lines smoothed out. I didn’t want to just draw an old face either. I found a stunning black and white photo of a man I just wanted to draw and charcoal just seemed the obvious medium. I now have a range of charcoal ‘tools’ from traditional willow charcoal to a few compressed sticks of various densities, charcoal pencils and a new range of water soluble Derwent charcoal pencils. I wanted to explore each of these and see what I could do with them, and try to understand better why I would choose one type above another and for what tasks.
I laid down an all over medium tone of willow charcoal, trying to ensure that I rubbed it in both horizontally and diagonally. The card had a slight tooth, and created a texture effect.
Using a putty rubber I tried to pull out the highlights. Almost immediately I could see that I made the nose longer than I had intended, but thought I would just make the face bigger to absorb that. However, as the ‘lifting out’ continued I became aware that the face was elongated, and consequently it looked thinner than I had wanted. However, knowing the instructions said not to alter your original drawing, but to leave mistakes, I persevered with it.
The ‘lift outs’ were my first marks and then I drew with willow charcoal to mark up the main features. I found the longer, thinner face gave my character a more menacing face and I quite liked this.
Having made the initial marks, I wanted to experiment with the water soluble charcoal pencils. This shows over his left eye, but I was really disappointed with how ‘grey’ even the darkest pencil was.
Nonetheless, using the feature of greyness I moved around the A3+ picture laying in other ‘washed areas with these Derwent pencils.
I switched between conte charcoal pencils and compressed charcoal sticks to build up more tone. The soluble pencils worked well to create the stubbly texture for the beard, and the marks were not too obvious. The pencils actually felt more like graphite soluble ones rather than charcoal which was a little disappointing.
I took this photo under the usual lighting conditions and looking at it on my camera and computer, liked the sepia ‘Victorian-villain-wanted poster’ feel of it. It has more ‘presence’.
However, today I took another photo using a daylight bulb in the same location. The difference is really noticeable and creates quite a different, colder, less atmospheric and harsher effect. It hasn’t altered the original artwork of course. That is something I must take into account when photographing other work for my blog. I am amazed the difference is quite as much as it is!
I tried to be conscious of the shape of the underlying skull and musculature as I drew this, particularly the cheek bones, the hollows of the eyes and the promontory on his forehead. I was less successful around the chin area, where the thinness of the face is overdone at this point, and does not reflect the shape of the jaw bone well. The right ear is also too small in relation to his left ear.
Nonetheless, I did enjoy working in this media, and in particular making the initial highlight marks with a rubber and building on this. I found it allowed me to be looser and quicker with my drawing. I will try to explore this more successfully in the next part of this project.
Ex. 2 Your Own Head
Create two interesting images of your own head.
To try and break down some of the anxiety about this task I did a few sketches using a mirror. These did not particularly encourage me.
Nonetheless, my husband kindly took some photos of me inside and outside the house and in different clothes to get variety with the images and lighting. I chose two pictures as my starting point and then experimented with cropping and altering the contrasts digitally.
I cropped the drawing then experimented with making it black and white and altering contrast. . I felt the black and white explorations did not work very well on this first image, and hoped they would work better for the second one when I came to it. This image primarily worked for me because of the quality of light created by the winter sunlight. To ‘get a feel’ for the drawing, I did two quick sketches for the first image. I wanted one of the drawings to be in charcoal after the previous exercise.
To get a ‘feel’ for and ‘tune in’ to the drawing, I did a couple of small sketches in my sketchbook first. Then, conscious not to start with an outline I thought I would start with an eye to start the scale and positioning, working from the inside out, allowing me to relate one feature to the next as I began to draw.
I chose to try this in oil pastels. I wanted colour and a medium I have not used very much. I only have a relatively limited range of colours and so knew I would have to visually blend them to get more of a variety of tones, rather than mixing paints or inks to the right colour before applying them. I hoped this might help me work in a looser style.
My initial marks were light and general as I intended. However, I was annoyed with myself that I had started with the left eye rather than the right. It meant that for the rest of the drawing my right hand would be covering work I had drawn and possibly even smudging the work.
I felt the drawing was going well enough until I drew in the second eye. I should have walked away from it before rushing to do that at the end of the day. It was immediately clear that it was in the wrong position and too dark. I left it at this stage overnight, not sure if I would be able to do anything with it in the morning with the thick black lines I had made. I was disappointed.
The morning brought a new determination to keep working on it and just redraw the eye where I thought it ought to be… much higher up and at a different angle to help create the rounded facet of the front of the face. I also needed to readjust the angle of the second half of the glasses.
I persevered, recognising that although the eye was in a slightly better position, it was now too small. However, there was now layers of oil pastel around the eye and to overwork it more would have left more of a distracting mess. I recognised it but moved on. The pastels are also a chunky drawing tool and as the ends become rounded, it can be hard to control exactly where the lines you think you are drawing actually mark the paper. It is much more of an issue when using a black pastel to try and get fine detailed eye outlines for example. Similarly it was a challenge to try and add highlights or shading to small areas like the ‘whites’ of the eyes as the drawing progressed.
Reflecting on the work now I could see that the first half of the face, with more oil pastel had blended more successfully and the second half looked more patchy. The blending for the cheekbone was also jarring.
By adding more layers of oil pastel and blending, I was able to smoothen out the second half of the face so that both sides looked much more similar. I aimed to keep the tones subtle and the blends smooth where appropriate.
I was surprised in drawing this how much I relied on shades of purple to create shadows. I also became aware of all the other colours of pastels I would like to have had. It seems I don’t have very many dark tones of reds, browns and greys in particular. However, the purple blended with a mix of a very pale yellow and a peachy tone was relatively effective in allowing me to create a range of suitable tones to suggest the different planes of the face. I like the bright light on the left hand side of the picture and the reflections cast on the face by the glasses. I think it adds visual interest. I did find that the glasses really added an extra degree of challenge in terms of matching size and shape to both parts of the frame, but at the same time I guess they also gave me more points of reference whilst drawing the face, and broke the surface up more.
Fortunately I think the second drawing leant itself more to a monochrome drawing.
I did experiment with a really close crop, but decided I preferred the whole picture on this occasion and tweaked the whole image a little to try and get a wider range of tones. Still, on reflection, looking at these photos again now, the second version black and white version I used as reference is very much ‘greyer’.
As in the previous exercise, I covered the paper with a lighter layer of willow charcoal and blended it into the background. I used a putty rubber to lift out highlighted areas and then began sketching in shapes and angles I could see. Again the glasses proved to be a challenge and a point of reference. They were a different pair from the first picture.
I wanted to keep this a loose quick drawing and not strive for a perfect likeness. I was more interested in challenging myself to find out if I could just draw by looking rather than worrying about measuring things and getting caught up with technicalities. I had found in a previous exercise the need to ‘get it right’ can be stifling. I just wanted to ‘go with it’ for this.
Rather than working up a small area I wanted to map up the whole. Standing back and looking I could see the face was not fat enough and I had to evaluate what I would need to change to improve that.
I often that the ear is farther back on the head than I ever expect it to be when looking at profiles, and the same was true for this.
Building on the learning from my first self-portrait I did not want to finish one area totally before moving onto another. I wanted the work to develop more holistically. I also didn’t want my right hand dragging over work I had already drawn.
Drawing the initial sketch with willow charcoal is very forgiving and it can usually just be rubbed out by hand with corrections drawn over the top. However, because it is so ‘moveable’ I was also very conscious of not leaning on work I had drawn. I was inspired to make the device below for this exercise as a leaning stick and it proved invaluable, allowing me to access parts of my picture without damaging other parts. I think it will become a well-used instrument.
In addition to the willow charcoal I used a range of H, B and 2B conte charcoal pencils. I did not use the Pierre Noir as I was more conscious of how it seemed to have a more waxy feel and did not blend so easily on this paper. I also did not use the soluble charcoal pencils in this, nor did I apply water over the compressed charcoal, but left, for example, evidence of the lines from this black man-made charcoal in the clothing.
The combination of these versions of charcoal allowed for the creation of a wide range of tones.
What I learned
I was more successful at varying line thickness and weight in this work. This can be seen with almost no line at the face edge and how the glass frame all but disappears in the sunlight on the far lens.
I was less satisfied using this paper for this artwork than my previous portrait charcoal drawing. It held the charcoal well, had an interesting texture and whilst I could get darks, it was less successful when I tried to pull the white of the paper back. It left a pale grey residue at best, despite trying a variety of erasers being tried. Just as I finished this work I came across an article about using charcoal in the SAA ‘Paint’ magazine.
Gouverneur (p19) advises: ‘I haven’t found anything that beats cartridge paper [for using charcoal]. Smoother papers smudge easily and won’t hold onto the charcoal, and rough textured papers hold onto the powder too well, so it’s tricky to blend or lift off’. This was too late to help me for this exercise, but useful to take on board for the future.
Reflecting on the drawing itself after I had finished I can see aspects of it that are clearly not correct. Perhaps I need to build in bigger ‘stand back and look’ breaks as these are so effective for spotting mistakes at an earlier stage. The edge of my nose is not at an acute enough angle. Seeing this in the early stages would have enabled me to get the missing width in my face more accurately. Also, the nearest eye glass is slightly too small. I should have extended it slightly to the left of the page. Finally another really noticeable fault is the angle of my neck. Such an elementary mistake.
However, without drawing any framework or using any measuring or scaling up device, but drawing this totally by eye and freely, I was pleased with this portrait. There is a likeness and I think it captures part of me beyond the physical too.
Interestingly, I stood (or at times perched on a high stool) and drew using my new easel for all the portrait drawings and found my style was looser than when I have sat in the past. The leaning stick proved to be a good intervention, allowing me to add more detail whilst standing, and I am sure I will be using it substantially in the future.
This is not an area of art I anticipated enjoying so much as I have. I am currently thinking I might be refining my potential ‘Human Body’ theme for Part 5 to be more specifically Portraiture.
References:
GOUVERNEUR, B, (2020) ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ in SAA Paint Magazine Jan 2020,Nottinghamshire
Ex.3 – Portrait from memory or the imagination
I anticipated that this exercise would be really interesting to do as I have learned a lot about individual facial features through this Part 4 about the Human Body, and have also participated in lots of life drawing classes. Nonetheless, I did watch a few videos on you tube about drawing a ‘Loomis Head’ to help me ‘tune in’. The Loomis Head was a new concept for me, and I was very interested in the process.
I liked the way it recognised the facets of the face and linked it quite strongly with the underlying anatomy of the face. The man was an interesting presenter, clearly with a good depth of knowledge. He worked and spoke very quickly so several times I had to pause the video and re-watch several parts. In general it is another strategy for constructing the face and head, and generally supports what I have learned from other sources over the years. As always it is helpful to have a range of tools and strategies to ‘draw on’ to be able to draw a face from imagination.
In drawing these exploratory sketches I was conscious of keeping my mark making fluid and I was trying to envisage what I had learned about the skull and structure of the head underneath. The marks are searching for the form. It was only after looking at them that some of them reminded me, (very slightly) of some of Giacometti’s face drawings with his repetitive ‘scribble’ lines also seeking the form.
Fondation Giacometti refer to his ‘use of a contour line in relation to the volume’. You can clearly see evidence of eye sockets and awareness of the prominent muscles projecting the mouth forward in some of these sketches.
I wanted to draw an older male face as I thought it would have more significant features to it. Sometimes a young female face can be hard to capture as there are less points of reference.
It was funny as before the exercise I felt confident that I knew what each aspect of the face looked like but as I began to draw, doubts emerged and then I wasn’t quite sure how parts of it ‘should’ look or fit together. The drawing kept evolving and changing, and the character appeared to age. It was a real ‘thinking’ exercise, drawing on all the prior learning.
Trying to work out what is ‘most’ wrong with the drawing is challenging. I wonder if the top of the forehead should recede more. Perhaps the nose should be longer and droop more….
I am sure it is a multiple of things that should change. However, it has succeeded in getting me to ‘wonder’ and it will certainly make me look much more at facial features of an older man. I am also inclined to try and find a photo of a three quarter image of an older man’s face to draw and think about and then to have another go at this imaginary face exercise. However, that is certainly for another time as I am keen to move on to the Assignment for this course at the moment.
I did enjoy the speed and urgency of working with a range of graphite tools. I found I had a lot of energy and enthusiasm for this task as I wasn’t trying to make it look like something in particular. It is a good ‘loosener’ exercise.
REFERENCES:
GIACOMETTI, Albert, (2020), ‘Giacometti and Drawings, [online]. Fondation Giacometti, Paris. Available at: https://www.fondation-giacometti.fr/en/article/281/giacometti-and-drawings [Accessed 5.2.2020]
GIACOMETTI, Albert, (1959), ‘Men’s Heads’, [online]. Guggenheim Bilbao. Available at: https://albertogiacometti.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en/exhibition [Accessed 5.2.2020]
PROKO, (2012), ‘How to Draw the Head from Any Angle’, [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EPNYWeEf1U&list=PL39135B8D190B7C97 [Accessed 1.2.2020]
PROKO, (2018), ‘Quickly Draw Heads with the Loomis Method – Part 1’, [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAOldLWIDSM [Accessed 1.2.2020]
PROKO, (2018), ‘Draw ANY Head Type with the Loomis Method – Part 2’’, [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC2ZppKHCqU [Accessed 1.2.2020]
PROKO, (2018), ‘Intuitive Portrait Sketching with the Loomis Method – Part 3’, [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9LOUHmPhS8 [Accessed 1.2.2020]
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