Reilly Method Head Drawing: Unit 2 – The Abstraction

[New Masters Academy]

In the series’ second lesson, Mark introduces Frank Reilly’s abstraction: a rhythmical representation of the shapes and forms of the head. Internalizing this model will give you an excellent starting point for any portrait or head drawing. Mark first explains a little bit of the history behind this abstraction, then moves on to show you how it can be applied to any given drawing or photo. Following that, he uses the abstraction and some tracing paper to demonstrate some portraits from the NMA and Drawthis! model reference libraries.

In this series, Mark introduces you to the Reilly Method, a way of understanding the structure of the head through the use of rhythms, to help project accurate proportions of your subject from any angle.

As the protegé to the famous Fred Fixler, who worked directly under the legendary Frank Reilly, Mark’s unrivaled knowledge of the Reilly Method for drawing the head led to an illustrious career in Hollywood movie poster design. He later founded Associate’s in Art in Southern California, a top school for illustrators, from which many alumni became the “who’s who” in the fields of figurative art. He will be greatly missed, and his imprint on the industry, students across the world, and here at the NMA studio will last forever.

[Stephan Furman]

Videos 3 and 4 seem to be in reverse order. 4 should come before 3.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by Stephan Furman.

[Daniel Daigle]

Hi Stephan, I am double checking with our team, but I believe this was done intentionally. One of the reasons we study master works is because the masters do a lot of problem solving for us. This makes it easier to see the use of the Reilly method abstraction after translation. Some times reverse engineering is easier than starting from the ground up.
As part of my practice, I like to do master studies before attempting to draw from life because it gives me a chance to practice the ideas the masters used while I am life drawing.
I hope this helps

[John Carter]

Actually, I think Stephan is right. At the beginning of video 3 Mark mentions drawing abstractions over photographs and that he is now going to do the same over the drawings.

[Daniel Daigle]

Hi John, I wanted to update that our team is aware of the issue and the fix has been assigned to an editor

[Author]

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