Head Construction

[Jaylene]

I have been working with the head constuction videos by Steve Houston.  I am trying to improve my portrait drawings.  Here are some general head drawing from my sketchbook at different stages.  Some are part of figuary, so my goal was to get an acurate gesture of the head, others are more finished.  I feel I am way off on something, not just general acuracy but in  the a characteristic 3d shape for the particular model’s head.  I would appriciate any thoughts you might have on where  I am fundamentally wrong and what I should focus my practice on.  Thanks so much for your time.

Jaylene

 

 

 

 

[Norman]

Hey Jaylene, are you still following Steve’s course? I do right now and try to get my head around heads too. I would be glad to see more work (maybe even open a “head drawing” thread somewhere here). I’m just beginning, too, so in no position to give real feedback. For me, I think it’s staying with very basic shapes and getting those right first. Can you draw a simple sphere and box and make them characteristic? I was reminded of this in my own critique here in the forum, maybe it’s helpful for you too.

Hope to see more work from you 🙂 Do you do the exercises in Steve’s course?

[Jaylene]

Yes I am still following Steve’s course.  I am not sure exactly how to start a thread on Head Construction but I think its worthwhile to make it distint from more finished portraits.  You are right about staying with the basic shapes to get them right first.  It seems to me that portraits are a very good “canary in a coal mind” drawing subject.  I may not know  where or at one point in the drawing it all went wrong but you can tell if a face is not quite right.  Anyway I tried the beginning course with Chris Legespi.   Looking at the different heads, I think I do ok with placing the eye level, but not the whistle notch thing.  Also my pencil marks don’t imply that things wrap around out of sight.  So I will definetly take a step back and start Huston’s head construction class over.  Thank you so much for responding even though you didn’t feel like you could give real feed back.  What you said was very helpful to me and I really appriciate it.

 

[Minh Do]

I also just start with Steve Huston’s head construction,I think maybe you should draw the direction(gesture) of the head first and other feature just track the box structure of it,you can square it up to feel the position if nessecary as Steve just taught in his lecutre

[Minh Do]

[maxlucon]

Hi! You are improving. I suggest you draw bigger. So you can use your arm and to make loose lines. 

 

Maybe 1 or 2 heads/Page

[Andres Cabanos]

Hi Jaylene, I like how your using the soft side of the pencil to create the hair and the shadows of the face. It seems like your aware of how lines and tone can effect the quality of the drawing. However the drawing felt a bit flat mainly because its missing core shadows. Also the cast shadow of the nose is rolling over the face a bit too much, creating weird shapes on the face so I’ve slight shifted the light upward a bit more. I hope this helps 🙂

 

 

[Jaylene]

Oh wow!  I just now realized people were replying to my post.  First off, Thank You All!  The forum/tech thing is something I am still learning.

I been subscribed to NMA for a year now and have been running around the courses like a chicken with my head cut off.  Such an embarrassment of riches, its just way too tempting.

Before I joined NMA I had done a lot of Bargue plate copying.  At first that was very satisfying but it lead to the realization that I don’t like reality that much (artistically speaking) so what is the use of copying it.  Steve Huston’s course is very helpful and is worthy of repetition. I hope to eventually construct things from imagination.

I decided to do five head constructions for  the 100 day challenge.  I think its very easy to tell if there is something wrong with a portrait even if you don’t know what is wrong so heads are a good place to start.  I will try drawing the heads in different sizes and take more time with the shadow patterns so the shapes are accurate.

Thank you everyone for your suggestions, they are all really helpful.

[Author]

Posts