- Lesson Details
- Transcript
- References
- Instructor
- Iliya Mirochnik
- Subjects
- Drawing
- Topics
- Drawing Exercises, Head & Portrait, Light & Color
- Mediums
- Chalk, Pencil
- Duration
- 3h 26m 17s
- Series
- Russian Drawing Course 2: The Head and Neck
In this lesson, we are going to bring together all of the structure and anatomy of the head and neck we’ve been studying in order to create a fully rendered portrait drawing from a live model.
Students are encouraged to work from the NMA reference images and 3D viewer included on this page*, or from a live model.
Join Ukrainian-born artist Iliya Mirochnik as he passes on a 250-year-old academic method preserved at the Repin Academy in Saint Petersburg, Russia and seldom taught outside of the Academy and never before on camera.
The Russian Academic drawing and painting approaches were uninterrupted by the modern art movements that transformed representational art in the West, and as a result, they provide a unique and clear lineage to the greater art traditions of the past. As a powerful approach that is both constructive and depictive, it combines the two methods that prevail in contemporary representational art.
In these three drawing Courses, we have set out to condense the entire program, spanning over eight years into a logical, step-by-step procedure. We have made improvements and added resources and exercises to explicitly drive home the concepts that are required to work in this approach.
We have also structured the course so that it is not only useful for professional and experienced artists but also artists with no drawing experience whatsoever.
In the first part of our Russian Academic Drawing Course, Iliya taught you how to hone your fundamental drawing skills. In this next part, Head & Neck, you will undertake a new challenge: the portrait.
In order to draw the complexity of nature we need to study all the anatomy that makes up the surface form of the head and neck.
Head & Neck covers topics such as the structure of the skull, individual bones of the skull, deep muscles of the face, skeleton of the neck & shoulder girdle, muscles of the shoulder girdle, and the portrait drawing process.
The New Masters Academy Coaching Program directly supports this Course. If you enroll in the coaching program, you can request an artist trained in the Russian Academic Method including Iliya Mirochnik himself. Click here to enroll in the Coaching Program.
Materials
- Sanguine pencil
- Piece of sanguine colored chalk
- Vine charcoal
- Charcoal pencil
- Notebook
- Graphite pencils
- Kneaded and Hard Erasers
- Sanding Block
- Utility Knife
- Roll of Paper, Smooth Sketchbook paper
- Staples
- Staple gun
- Artist panel
- Easel
- Light source
* Reference material is only available for premium subscriptions. If you don’t have premium access to the reference, you can pause the video when the reference is shown.
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Discusswe have covered the principle anatomical structures of the
head and neck, let's see how we can put them to use when working
from a live model.
now that we've worked on the skull and the
shoulder girdle, it's now time to try to put all of that understanding
into a drawing from a live model. And here we have our wonderful model
Mark on whom a lot of these things that we covered are quite clear.
Now, it won't always be as clear
as you see here in front of you
but I think this'll be perfect
for trying to see how those
underlying structures all begin to integrate.
Okay so
here we have a fairly large
piece of paper and we're going to try to include the head and the shoulder girdle
and even a part of the shoulder and
deltoid. So we're gonna spend some time just
trying to figure out how to compose this.
So I'm just going to get
started with the head here, kind of just placing it
broadly
and at the same time already beginning
to see
(drawing)
where those parts of the skull are
most obvious. So here I even
already applied a little more pressure there because that is
our parietal eminence.
And then from the head there's - here we also
of course are experiencing a little bit more of a tilt of the head which is
excellent. So we can put our
center line in, just establish
where it is. And just approximate
placement for the eyes.
We're not worried about the eyes now, we're gonna be focusing more
on the underlying structures so -
and
the entirety of the eye socket. So here
(drawing)
we're gonna move down
a bit to establish the placement of the sternal
notch and actually take a vertical upwards
and see where it ends up and keep it there. And it seems to end
up right at - if I just
take a vertical upwards, right at the corner of the eye or in terms of the -
(drawing)
where the eye socket is
in which the frontal process of the zygomatic bone connects with the zygomatic process
of the frontal bone. So
without getting too much more in
we're gonna start to place
the shoulders a bit and going to
move down and establish where our manubrium is
and then
to get the entirety of
the clavicle, remember that we
really want to have all of it so
almost outline it as if there wasn't any
skin on it at all. And then we're going to integrate it
into everything else. And then I'm
sure you're already seeing the parts that you are familiar with
so here we have the trapezius and then
at the end of the clavicle we have
(drawing)
pretty obvious acromion right there.
And then
we can just continue down to get the
deltoid where you can see its attachment on the clavicle, you see the
infaclavicular fossa
right here and the clavicular head
or portion of the
pectoralis major.
(drawing)
So we're still just figuring out our place
and because our main axis are here and here,
I've moved the head over a bit to
the left.
And
so here this is
the first time that we've switched from the graphite to the
sanguine or Conté pencil and
to chalk and if you see
it's
not particularly hard to
make that switch, make that
transition. So where we
are at the moment, you
will see that some of the difficulties
and some of the difficulties of working with
the chalk will arise once we start
applying a little more tone to
our drawing and so now
I'm just going to take the proportion of the clavicle and
the acromion and then I'm going to take that
measurement and move it from the sternal notch upwards. And it seems
from what we have here that
(drawing)
distance hits
the upper margin of
our eye socket.
And that is what we have on the page right now.
So I think
we're kind of alright.
Keep in mind that you do want to put both clavicles in but at the same time
they're not in the placement.
Mainly because the shoulder here is slightly up. And so
this is another - so it's
rather hard to simply take it across.
You have to find the particular
orientation of
each of the clavicles.
So this one here
is sweeping back
a bit more
than
the one here
as well as that this clavicle
due to the raised arm is slightly higher.
And so
before we move on, let's,
based on our understanding but also from observation,
really make sure
to find the manubrium
and our sternal angle.
Which I think is quite clear. So once we find
the end of the
manubrium and the sternal angle, we can place
rib number two as well and
take the center line
into the sternum.
And see I'm spending even more
time here at the beginning than I am on the head because I really
want to anchor the head in the shoulder girdle.
But I think we're
alright for the moment and we can sort of begin to move upwards.
And in order
to establish some of the placement
just going to make sure to get a clear read
on
(drawing)
our terminator here
but at the same time
making sure to align it with everything happening on the other
(drawing)
across from our center line. So -
but you don't want too much information inside without
more clarity on the outside. And so we can go up here and find the
highest point of the skull
and do the same thing, kind of just align it
vertically and
it falls
on the inner margin
of our eye socket.
(drawing)
And then we can move this out to the
parietal eminence. So I'm kind of -
in order to establish proportions I'm just making sure that
this very important element
that we covered in quite
some detail is aligned with everything else
on the page. But at the same time, why don't we
take this,
the zygomatic bone,
and connect it to the zygomatic process of the temporal bone.
And so see I'm still
focusing on all those parts of the skull that we've covered.
Now it's time to place the angle
of the mandible and begin to see
where the entirety of the mandible is.
(drawing)
And here you can see the mass of the
masseter there.
And here you can begin to see
the sternocleidomastoid.
And it's not always
very obvious where
the sternal head is and where the
clavicular head is so we do wanna
try to get a grouping of it at first at least.
(drawing)
And here you can really
pinpoint the
sternal head on the
other sternocleidomastoid.
So now that we have this eye socket here we don't want
to leave the other one unattended.
And so
(drawing)
just begin to work across.
(drawing)
And see so I'm practically
drawing the skull
and if you remember what one of the more important points
is, it's this plane of the
glabella. The
glabella.
(drawing)
Then that would be the end of
the nose and then we can begin to place
the obicularis oris.
See once again I'm not focusing on the shape of
the mouth I'm just
working a larger structure there.
And our chin
is right here and as you're
well aware of all of
the stuff that we're
talking about and that we're putting down on paper
is subject to change at any point.
(drawing)
And then let's just establish where the ear is.
(drawing)
So
I usually just compare it to the eye socket and
(drawing)
this
area here, it could be pretty much anywhere there.
(drawing)
So here we're gonna need to pull
back a bit more.
And I think we're just about ready to start thinking
a little more tonally.
(drawing)
And so
I kind of - I work in a combination of
media and to just establish the large areas of tone
quickly I use a piece
of chalk like the one I'm holding here,
that in this case is a little bit larger than I need it.
(drawing)
And so that kind of can get the placement
of where our shadows are but at the same time
it'll play a role in establishing half tones also.
(drawing)
And a large part of this -
and that's kind of the advantage and the
enjoyment of working with
media that are
as soft as these
is that you can work with your hands
even more.
(drawing)
And we remember that
our temporal line
is an area
of major plane change between the front
and the side. And here I even want to begin to get
where - to place on the page
at least for now where
our front plane is going to be.
(drawing)
So I'm gonna keep that as is for now.
And do a little
bit more on this clavicle. It's higher so we're gonna get
that curvature
that's concave right
here but then you can see it becoming
convex in that middle portion.
(drawing)
Then we can place our manubrium
and area around the sternal angle into tone.
(drawing)
And let's drop that cast shadow from the head
onto that other clavicle to give us the structure. You can see it falling on the
clavicle, it's falling into the
infraclavicular fossa and then
moving on top of the deltoid. Now
that's a hard line that we don't really want but at least
for now, to give us an idea,
that's nice to have there.
And then to just place some of these half tones.
(drawing)
And all of these areas and you can see that.
And see so a lot of it, after the basic placement
with the pencil I'm doing with the
piece of chalk. And it kind of - and because it's as
large as it is and you can hold it flat, you can block in
whole areas of plane.
And honestly you can actually begin with it within working with
the pencil. But it's
nice to have some guidelines.
or else there's
just an immense amount of erasing which
is interesting and I urge you to try it.
Okay
I think for where we are right now
we kinda have enough going on
so what we do need is to figure out where
that front plane of the ribcage is.
And so it's usually if you drop
a line from that major
change of plane in the clavicle after
its sternal end, it should give you that.
But at the same time we
want to figure out
what are the changes
in plane and how they're being altered by the pectoralis as well.
Because you can't see the ribcage in its entirety
so you kinda can
(drawing)
use the sternal angle to establish it.
And then that line is going
to give you that front plane of the rib cage
but it won't necessarily turn back
as quickly due to the fact that
there's this a mass there of
the two pectoralis
major muscles.
Okay, but now that that's in place
I think that we can
get some more work done on the head.
(drawing)
Due to the prominences of this
zygomatic arch
let's spend some time in this area.
(drawing)
And there's a large
portion of the modeling at the beginning
especially that can be done with
your hands.
(drawing)
And you can
see and you can start placing those -
those highlights on those protruding parts
of the zygomatic almost right away.
Now in terms of the entirety
of the orbit with the eye,
you do want to make sure that it is in sort of a plane of its own because
remember it is a hole
in the head, in the skull, and so you
need to get that in place.
And a lot of the times,
due to a lack
of experience,
students will spend so much
time working on the eyes that they
forget to establish
the orbits relative
tonality to the parts around it.
And then
that's just adding a lot of extra work.
Then we can begin to get some things that are a little more characteristic
and we spoke a little bit about the
wings of the
nose and how this cartilage has to wrap
in and under.
(drawing)
But once again, don't get carried away with any of
the specifics. And definitely not with the
features themselves. I assure you -
I mean of course there's a lot
to kind of understand and practice when it comes to the feature but honestly
I think you'll arrive at that much quicker if you
ignore them for at least a certain amount of time
and focus on the underlying structures of the head.
(drawing)
And so
as we know, if you begin to place
accents along the terminator and make these things clearer
this gives you more options for how dark
you can make the half tone
(drawing)
and use your erasers
(drawing)
and I'm going to bring this
down a bit even more
for the time being.
It might go back up, I don't know yet, but I think
it probably won't.
(drawing)
So let's get back to the
eye socket.
And see it's no
eyes yet. And I
kind of urge you to give
this a shot. Kind of ignore the features for as long as possible
and you'll see that at a certain point
you'll just be sort of working on
the skull inside the head and all these
things we've been talking about
and then you'll step away and you'll see that the eye is actually already in there.
Or almost in there and just a few accents will really
put it in place.
And I kind of
discovered that when I was painting a
portrait and I
didn't paint the eye at all but then when I finally
stepped away to take a look at
the canvas
I had actually painted the eye in.
But it's so much easier
to
draw an eye or any detail once
you've established its placement.
(drawing)
See so
this is still sort of
roughed in
but you can already begin to see
those underlying structures of the skull.
(drawing)
And we're
also quite concerned with that overall
egg like
quality of the head in general.
(drawing)
Now I'm just going to place -
not
just place
that line that we see in between
the lips just to make sure that our
proportions are in there and on the right
track.
(drawing)
Well Mark is currently
taking a break and
you always
want to give your models a break
as often as they require it but at the
same time, it does not mean that you necessarily have to take
a break. And I think it could be actually quite helpful
to continue for at least a little bit without
the model in front of you. So
at that point you aren't
kind of caught up
in these smaller details and then you end up
working slightly more from
your understanding of the anatomy
and the structures of the
head. So you can actually begin to
put them on paper and
you'll see that once the model comes back, you might actually have
something on the page that looks a little bit closer
to what's in front of you than you had when
you got sort of caught up in copying at least certain elements.
This happens all the time.
(drawing)
And so what we
could do right now without
our model is to make sure that we have a
good alignment and
placement of the edges between the front plane of the face
and the side and the intermediary planes.
So here we have the front plane up here of the frontal
bone and then we take
that line down the
zygomatic process and from
that point if you remember on the skull
we gotta move it down to the corners of the mouth.
Corners of the obicularis oris
on - and we're doing everything across
from our center line to make sure that
their proper alignments and everything is symmetrical. And from here
we can drop this down to
the chin, even though you remember there is
the mental protuberance,
we can drop this down to the chin even though
you know that there is the mental protuberance
and smaller changes
in plane here. So this isn't entirely as
flat as it might seem at the moment but honestly
all of these parts on top aren't either. But that's still the major
plane, simplified plane.
If we take the line down to the angle of the
jaw and then follow it
upwards into our temporal line
we've established essentially the side plane
and then we have an intermediary plane up
here and one down
here. You can already begin to see how it's describing
what's happening here. It's describing this protrusion of the
masseter, this plane
right here is incorporating that kind of, the
mass of the cheeks here with the
buccinator underneath. Here you see the
temporal
line, giving you a
bit more of a prominent element in the frontal
bone and here you have
the
temporalis.
And so following our center line
we can also create a little bit of a triangle here that
kind of establishes how these planes
move upwards and then we can take the -
take those up as well. Now the idea is that
you don't always have to put them on paper but you do have to
keep them in mind. I'm putting them on paper
in order to show you
where those planes are. And also the thing -
and
our model is back and now we could -
we could compare
and see if those
changes in plane that I put are actually
in the right places and are
helping us. And I think they're all right.
(drawing)
Okay so
of course
there are smaller changes in plane along each of these.
(drawing)
And we could keep breaking
them down as much as
we can.
But at the same time
you have to
begin to think of
all of them without putting them down on paper. And that's kind of the thing that I
would like to urge you to do and that is
not to establish your outlines and then put all these
planes on paper before
you've even observed and before you've
put some tone on the
page. It's a lot like I recommend
not taking proportions until
something is on the page.
(drawing)
And then afterwards establish your
proportions and establish all those major changes in plane
essentially in order to correct yourself.
(drawing)
So now let's begin to get a little more specific.
And a good place to start is always
with our terminators.
And once the terminator eats
up a line that's important, make sure to put it back in.
(drawing)
Along that change in plane between the front plane and the side
plane of the nose
we're going to get a highlight. Remember to
use the highlights to establish
major changes in plane.
(drawing)
And here we seem to have a little bit of a
cast shadow from
(drawing)
the bridge of the nose
falling onto the eye but the eye itself -
the eye
ball begins to fall
into a shadow and you can see the core shadow and terminator there. So there's a tiny bit of light
that maybe kinda appears and dissapears
because that is what tends
to happen when you're working from a live model.
There is movement and this
movement is actually quite important
because as there -
as those changes
happen, actually they
end up giving you a better understanding of what's happening there. Of
what's going on in terms of the form.
(drawing)
So movement in
models is not only okay but it's
also helpful.
It's only not okay if you're not
analyzing and only copying, which we know
you shouldn't
partake in that
practice.
Though of course there are parts that you copy and just kind of
observe and other parts you
analyze and understand.
(drawing)
Though ideally the whole point is to have
an understanding of all of those observed parts.
(drawing)
Okay so we have sort of blocked
out a head here.
I think we've got
the character.
(drawing)
Now would be a time to
go over and to check your proportions,
only
now.
(drawing)
So why don't we
leave the head where it is at the moment
and move down
following the sternocleidomastoid.
(drawing)
And here we do get a
little bit
of the sternal head.
We do get a little
bit of the clavicular head. You can see
it right here. That
tiny area in between the two.
And then because of the skin on top here
you actually can see, sticking out
right here and kind of combining with this whole area,
the omohyoid.
Which look small and unimportant when we were working
on it our anatomical écorché
but you can see sort of creates quite
an important detail.
(drawing)
And here
we have
(drawing)
the
part that sticks out
from the
thyroid cartilage.
And we're even getting a little bit of -
and you're doing a lot of angles on the head
you get a little bit of the
part underneath -
underneath the mandible. So you
remember that this whole part
ends at the hyoid.
So it's important to mark that area.
You even get a cast
shadow from the head there falling onto the neck.
Now here
is that area of the scalenes
and remember that they kind of
create the end of that cylindrical structure
that is going to establish the base
of our neck.
Then we can follow the forms here
and this is
the levator
scapulae.
And you can see that tiny,
sort of
for our purposes call it a line.
And that is where the
levator scapulae, right there,
swoops under the
trapezius right there. See, all those things
that we've covered.
And then in here we have
(drawing)
a bit of an empty area
if you remember.
(drawing)
And we don't want the neck to get more attention in the head
due to contrast that we
currently have because there isn't a tone over
everything. So we're just going to
make sure to place it in a general
tone. And of course once that happens maybe
there are parts that you've placed, that you've lost, and so on. But
that's okay because you can always
get them back. Here we have the head of the clavicle
and quite a strong half tone
(drawing)
right there.
And then to show
the bottom edge of the clavicle that's catching a bit of light we're gonna need
a half tone on the pectoralis.
(drawing)
And the exact same thing here,
remember to look for the origins
on the deltoid as it comes
off of the clavicle and the acromion. Because that, even more important
than allowing you to find where the deltoid is,
it gives you the
clavicle. Which you're always
on the hunt for.
(drawing)
And by placing that I've lost the
the sternocleidomastoid a little bit.
(drawing)
And I've clearly I've lost the manubrium
along with group number one and two here.
(drawing)
And here we can also separate
the pectoralis and make
sure it reads but also keep in mind
that our light coming from here is going
to place all the forms that are curving away from it
into a darker half tone and eventually shadow.
(drawing)
Okay so
let's get a little more
specific here
(drawing)
and see I'm working
broadly at the moment, just
making sure everything's in place and slowly getting
more and more precise.
As well as beginning to get our
important accents and this is
nice and easy to do with a piece of Conté
because it's so soft and
then it also erases
easily so...
Oh and
then I see, right now we're actually getting a little more clarity
on the sternal head,
clavicular head. I keep getting those wrong. On the clavicular head
of the sternocleidomastoid, now there's a shadow in there
and that's what I mean about the tiny
movements really helping you see
the form.
Like there's just a larger amount of
information that might be uncovered due to
just one
tiny movement. So I -
and I'm not -
I'm not saying
that is already completed
I think if we get into it we'll really see
(drawing)
how
this cast shadow is describing
those inner forms of the sternal notch.
(drawing)
And here I want to get that clavicle
in there but I want to make sure that it's
in that half tone and
the shadow as well.
Now the thing about the chalk that
I'm using is that by now you've probably noticed
it doesn't give you as large of a tonal
range as
the graphite
and especially
a charcoal if you've used it, which gives you an incredibly
large tonal range. While here
there's a lot that's going
to happen where the values
in your half tones are gonna be very close
to those in your reflected, in your -
in the reflected light. And so
that is kind of just what happens.
So there's gonna be some time spent
on making sure that there is some
differentiation in there.
And it's easy to get sort of caught up in
that.
But I also think that
that's kinda the charm of this
medium. It's that
you could get strong and exciting contrasts
and then also passages that are
really really smoky.
(drawing)
Now you remember that once we get
some of these areas of the clavicle and the acromion
we need to establish where that sort of highlight
is on the deltoid mainly to show our major changes
in plane between the
front, side, and the top
planes.
And then there's going to be
(drawing)
a change in plane over there also. Now here,
now even if I
squint, I do see that arm is catching
a lot of light but I'm not sure I want it to
be as sort of active on the
page as
the one here. So I'm just gonna place
into a half tone and worry about it later.
(drawing)
Okay I actually think it's
time to get back to working on the head.
As you see my hands are covered in
the chalk, that's
exciting.
But now it's time to get into some specifics.
(drawing)
And it's
certain cases I'm going to smudge
a little bit the stump
I have mainly in those areas that are just smaller. And so a stump,
a point can help achieve
that a little quicker and more precisely.
(drawing)
See there's still no
eye.
But we could begin to place it.
Inner corner and outer corner.
(drawing)
But if you're doing that one then
make sure to do the other one and the other one we have
I really want to use it.
(drawing)
And then let's get back to our
zygomatic arch.
That's always where we come back to.
(drawing)
So just
using everything I can here to establish
the roundness of the eyeball itself.
So the eyelids are
wrapping around there.
(drawing)
Making sure that
some of these important accents read and then
you can see all of this getting a bit softer as we move up.
(drawing)
And here we have that
major change in plane between the side plane of the nose and the front plane of the face
and of course that's going to give us some of these highlights.
(drawing)
Just imagining what's happening with
the skull inside. Really
really seeing these things as planes
and use the hatch to give you the
plane.
(drawing)
And see
the fact that the
half tones end up being closer in value
to your shadows allows you to just
make sure that you have a clear area of where the shadows are.
And then to spend most of your time on your half tones.
That's kinda the reason why I like this medium is it makes you
focus on the structure if
you use it the right way as opposed to
simply comparing one value to another.
Though of course that's important.
(drawing)
But it allows you to work more in half tone
and explore more of the form.
(drawing)
The interesting thing here
is that what's gonna happen with the front
plane, like the most
within the front plane, the most protruding part
is that it's all going to be concentrated here.
Now it's not as easy to pick up because
of some of these elements that are
sort of interrupting
a bit more clarity along that
still free to see that the
center line that we put here is also the part that comes out
the most. Almost into a point
that kind of, that line of the profile.
So it's important to realize
that and to begin to
to see that despite some of the contrasts here,
all of this is
half tone.
And that's also -
so it's the
obicularis oris.
(drawing)
Right, so the most outward points
are here and that's where you're going to get that
highlight also, which
will give you the
sort of the end of the upper line of the
upper lip and then here
because you
see this edge of the upper lip
usually so clearly, that's mainly because of a change in color.
But that's not as sharp of a change
in the form. If you were to imagine the
color removed as if this were a cast
you really see more
prominence right here while all of t
these other areas, those changes in plane are much softer.
And then here we have
the chin. So that's
where we'll have our main area of
light. If our light, you know,
granted that this will be the major
change in plane between the front
most plane and the one that's beginning to
turn away, even though all of this is front plane.
a break
let's get back to it.
Now here we have a bit of a
form that we didn't really cover we saw part of it cut
on the head but it is the
zygomatic major
muscle.
And it is helping us distinguish between
that intermediary plane and the side there so we're gonna put it in.
(drawing)
As you can see from a tonal standpoint
things are kind of all over the place at the moment so occasionally just
kinda go back
and even things out a little bit.
(drawing)
Alright so -
and then we can hatch into it
and smudge and all that stuff to make sure we
get what we need.
And our outlines are still practically
non existent but it's about time to start
putting them in to make sure we have a clear end to
the end of the skull there.
(drawing)
And the same on the other side.
Make sure to have the highest point there and then
to take it
all around.
(drawing)
And then to get a little more
contrast along our terminator though
(drawing)
and leave
what we have behind there as reflected light. And see
even that still reads like reflected light.
(drawing)
Now we're getting a little bit of
light
right there as well
but it's a darker half tone
and we can see a little bit of the
muscles that
sort of on top of the
frontal bone and that are kind of
getting all of the structures
of the frontal bone, like the arches right here
and the frontal eminence, making them a little bit softer.
So we don't really see too much
here but at the same time
we work a tone into there,
could still be rather clear that there is
a light right here on that
slightly more outer part
of the arch there.
(drawing)
Now you don't need
to keep the pencil
extremely
sharp but it will lose its sharpness quicker than
its softer.
(drawing)
So occasionally
we do want to
to get it to just a slightly finer point.
And if you saw, you don't need it too sharp
mainly because you're not doing too much with the pencil. A lot
of the work
is
done with your hands,
stumps, and the erasers.
(drawing)
So here
(drawing)
at the point that is
really kind of, in a sense, the edge between everything here
and everything here, this end
on that side of the face and the side plane of the nose.
(drawing)
We can make sure to emphasize our terminator.
(drawing)
I'm just gonna clean this up a little
bit even though I promise you it'll get smudged up again.
(drawing)
And then making sure to get our skull in there
clearly. You're always coming back to
really figuring out where the skull is inside the head.
A lot of time
is spent on that. That essentially is one of the main things you're thinking about.
Where can you see
the skull underneath
all of these forms. Here you
have a little bit of a change in plane as well, small
one, and we also
saw a little bit of it on the ecorche head
and this is the zygomatic minor.
muscle right there. So this is the
zygomatic major and that's the zygomatic minor.
But I don't
wanna
talk too much about
all of
those
muscles that really aren't
playing a primary role
in the structure of a head.
(drawing)
Now see I still haven't worked too much
on the features,
mainly focusing my attention
(drawing)
on
what I consider more important structures.
(drawing)
Here to kind of
end the mandible by finding
the chin.
(drawing)
And then all of this stuff
on the other
side there we can make sure sort of
placed in a general area of reflected light.
Now
the ear we do need to
do a little bit of work on it.
Now Mark's
ears are quite characteristic and I think
that's going to help us understand a lot of
what's happening. So here you have the tragus,
this part that comes out. I'll just go over some of the
major parts. Down here you have the antitragus
which connects upwards with a form know as
the anti
helix.
And there's that part that
fits apart up there. And then
here you have the earlobe and
if, moving up, it connects to a part known as
the helix.
So you have helix on the outside, antihelix on the inside,
tragus coming out right here, also outside, and then the
antitragus inside there.
And, for our purposes,
that's what we need. And then we just need a general
tone on the ear and we can
mod a little bit more with the eraser.
(drawing)
Now here we have that line
known as the naso labial
fold or crease, I actually don't remember.
But it's that line you see quite often, going from
the wing of the nostril to sort of the
end, the sort of outer corner
of the obicularis oris. Now
it's very common that students over emphasize
it so it obviously plays a large role in character
but you don't want to make that the most important
element on the page.
Here in the corner of the mouth
we have a little bit of a
cast shadow. It's really gonna be
helpful.
And then from here
(drawing)
from the tragus
I'm just gonna make sure to continue
downwards into the masseter
even though there's no clear line there, we need to
emphasize the angle of the jaw.
(drawing)
Here we have the thyroid cartilage.
And our main terminator
is gonna help us establish the cylindrical,
sort of overall cylindrical form of the neck.
All stuff that we've been talking about.
(drawing)
And this line
right here currently is not as descriptive as I want
it. There's some overlaps
that really wanna capture this sternocleidomastoid
and
these are the other forms of the neck.
(drawing)
So
now right here -
(drawing)
so let's get some work done on the
trapezius and in general, this area
from a tonal perspective, really see a light
only on the clavicle where it's the clearest
in between the infra and supra
clavicular fossi.
And everything else can be placed in a tone.
(drawing)
See that's really close to the value of our
shadows. So we might need to
bring it up a notch or tone down our
shadows but keep in mind that working with
this chalk kind of places a cap
on how dark you can push your values.
At the same time I kind of like how that looks.
So if you like how something looks on one part
then it's your
job to figure out how to integrate it
with all the other parts.
That's kinda part of the -
(drawing)
that's all quite exciting.
It's almost a puzzle.
So in order
to do that probably
some of these accents here
might need to be made more clear, more obvious.
(drawing)
And there begins to read like half tone now.
Now
I think this is a little bit,
it needs to be a little bit rounder, I have it
quite acute so
(drawing)
I'll just soften that a little bit.
And then just using the eraser, begin to
figure out what's happening here with
the sort of the end of our clavicle and our first rib.
(drawing)
The manubrium itself.
(drawing)
And
rib number two right there. You can
really see it
but
I don't advise making it too light.
(drawing)
I'm just placing that
in a general tonality to make sure we really can get our
manubrium reading.
So here we have rib number two. You might even
at least to place it, almost outline just like we did with the clavicle.
The clavicle here,
also quite an interesting area but
we have a little bit of a half tone there mainly
signifying the outermost part
here and then the change in plane underneath the clavicle
into the infraclavicular fossa.
(drawing)
And sometimes
the curve of the clavicle isn't as obvious from a certain angle
then you might just need to invent it.
(drawing)
And here too I'm just
gonna get a general half tone,
we don't want too much information
down there because our focus is still up here.
(drawing)
So see so
while still thinking and figuring out
some structural things, what I'm doing now
is mainly just making sure that we're getting a little bit
more clarity on our
major distinctions
between shadow and half tone as well as
within our half tones.
(drawing)
This part is quite enjoyable.
(drawing)
And then here, overall I just want some sort of
half tone up here so that we have room,
and by room I mean tonal room,
to establish that our main
highlights, which are sort of
disrupted by the creases here which we're going to
put in and that are really characteristic
but it's - they are -
it's on that intermediary plane between the front and the side.
And that's often
a place where you're going to see the highlight
on the frontal bone.
See so at the same time I'm sure you're seeing those
creases but I urge you to not
put them
in yet. Leave them until almost the very
end. And
just have a word on the
way that I use
that large piece of chalk. You'll see that in some places
I leave it in such a way where
by placing it onto the paper it gives you
a little bit of a grain.
And
other times I rub it into the paper
to get a smooth area of
tone. And so I think it's
important to play around with those kinds of variations.
(drawing)
And I wish I could give you
sort of a rule for where to use one
and not the other but I almost can't.
(drawing)
We just have to experiment with it.
(drawing)
And also I don't think it would be that enjoyable if I did give you a rule.
(drawing)
There are a lot of things here that are open to
improvisation and I think
that that's what really makes this kind of approach
exciting. Now here
even though this is in this area of shadow and it sort of kept much calmer,
we do see how the other,
the nasal labial fold
on the other side is there
and we can just hint at it so that we
establish that alignment because
alignment is not only our main elements
aligned with their opposites, it's even
something as small as a crease
needs to be
thought about in conjunction with its
pair on the other side.
(drawing)
Now you can really see the
upper margin
of the eye socket there and I think that needs to be
a clear accent, a clear point.
(drawing)
And then here we need to
complete the eye socket down there as well.
(drawing)
And because of
our light
we can see that the front plane of the chin is also in
somewhat of a half tone in relation to
this kind of area. That is also can be considered
an intermediary plane between the front and side.
(drawing)
Now I've lost a little bit of
the clavicle here so we're gonna have to go back and find it
and at that point just almost outline it again.
And then we're gonna really make sure to have
all of our accents there.
break and kind of established everything we need here in order
to get into
some of these specifics detail by detail.
(drawing)
I do want to make a couple of
quick additions.
(drawing)
I would like
to reintroduce
to the manubrium
(drawing)
get it in place, a little more
precisely
(drawing)
and keep in mind that this is
a little bit harder to do mainly because the clavicles are not
perfectly aligned in terms
of their orientation because of
what's happening with the arm
and the -
and the shoulder.
(drawing)
And here I marked
it earlier but I just - we need to get the
entirety of the ribcage in there.
So we're
gonna go back to the manubrium and
some of that
there. The pectoralis.
And I just feel like
you can tone down most of the neck
(drawing)
even though we'll probably have to do more of that later
anyway. Okay so.
(drawing)
So now let's get into some of these
specifics.
Mainly concerning the
features of the face. And as we're doing that
make sure to kind of amp up our
contrasts.
(drawing)
And use your highlight
to give you
the
major changes in plane. Now what's important
is that these highlights
have to have
very particular edges depending
on the forms or rather the intersection of forms
that they're describing.
(drawing)
So in some places
there should only be a hard edge of that highlight and that
is because there's a
more sort of abrupt plane
change, a stronger angle there.
(drawing)
And I know I've lost
the other side of the
nose a bit but you just wanna have it in there
enough
so we make sure it reads
just enough within that shadow.
(drawing)
And then at times you can use the side of the
eraser kinda like the side of the
chalk. So take out
sort of a larger plane of light to remove
the medium a little bit
in a structured way.
(drawing)
So
as you see I am mainly spending
the time
working sort of around
the features.
And that's what I can
recommend. Don't go at them directly
but work around them and inch towards them.
Sort of tiny, there's no plane
change in half tone at a time.
(drawing)
And this is what I was talking about, you
can, at a certain point, begin to hint at
the color of
the
lip that's defining the shape of the lip
but
still thinking of the larger mass.
It's almost very
clear what's happening with the changes in plane
here.
(drawing)
And then,
even at this point,
can begin to kind of carve out details
that might, at first glance, appear rather, sort of
accidental
and by that I don't mean a detail that's
that just happens to appear
at the moment, I just mean something that
pertains to those sort of
particular characteristic qualities of the model.
(drawing)
A lot like that texture
on these
the
tissues at the top of even
the - not as, sort of
not as
structural, anatomical,
anatomical details.
(drawing)
So that kind of
padding on the chin
is going to have
small areas
of light
but all at the same time we need
to make sure to have our
main structural
elements
clearly accented
(drawing)
to prove even that
we know what's really important.
So I think you can sort of
follow along with the approach and you see that
even when working on
(drawing)
a detail that might seem kinda small and almost
inconsequential, after working on it for just even a
very short amount of time, you kinda step away
and go back to those primary masses and
muscular and
skeletal
structures and forms.
(drawing)
And I'm working here along that terminator,
figuring out where we have our
core shadow.
I haven't done too
much on that outline and that outline
is sort of a quality that I like to add
to drawing in
chalk and charcoal.
So it's sort of a personal touch of mine but it's
not arbitrary.
(drawing)
I think that an outline on this edge
can actually give a lot of information
if you follow the overlaps
without having to go in and model too
much of the reflected light.
So it
saves me a bit of time,
still makes a part interesting
and -
(drawing)
but is not sort of -
and keeps
a variation in the
drawing in terms of sort of the amount of
modeling in one part and
in relation to any other.
(drawing)
Here we are on the eye but the same principle
working around the eye.
(drawing)
And see I've spent some time with it like
hardly any time with it actually. I've spent a tiny bit of time on the eye but I'm already moving up again.
(drawing)
And here I find that the amount of texture
is just a little over,
it sort of, it's
taking over. There's a lot
of the texture of the paper that is taking
away from
those very important areas. And in this
case also very characteristic areas of the frontal bone.
(drawing)
And here is where my
eraser pen can really come in
handy
(drawing)
but remember it's not necessary.
It's just a fun thing to play around with.
Now I don't advise
that you -
sort of the tendency that I see is that
it gets very tempting to hatch
with the eraser
especially when you have it
looking like a mechanical
pencil itself so you almost want to hatch with it
and I kind of advise against it because
if you're already hatching with the
pencils and then with the erasers on top, there's a
quality there that you really need to think about
before you implement
it. There's a chance that it might
take over the
drawing a bit and
I'm not opposed to that but it's something
to be aware of that I think
that if that's the approach
(drawing)
that that will kind of
draw most of the attention
right away.
And if that's what
you're interested in, then by all means.
But you just have to be sort of conscious
of the
effects of your actions and
stylistic
preferences.
On the other hand, you don't ever
really know what happens until you try it and so
maybe you should.
(drawing)
Here I feel like we need a little bit
more happening with the -
(drawing)
with the zygomatic arch.
(drawing)
And the
earlobe has to come over
the
cheek and you can see that highlight, it's going to give you
an almost
box like conception of the ear, followed by
that slightly outer
part of the bottom of the
helix.
(drawing)
If you've noticed I've been sort of ignoring eyebrows
because I think there's a tendency to put the eyebrow
in too soon and of course
they play a really important
role in portraiture because there's a lot of
character and expression in the eyebrows
but you don't
want to put them on too soon because a lot of the times
they kind of obfuscate the
structures of the
frontal bone on top of which it lies.
(drawing)
Just slightly enlarge the cranium
just a bit
and
sort of take a look at the
head in its
totality.
(drawing)
And I feel like why not make some of these
areas clear
and add a little more contrast
between our core shadow
and terminator and our
half tones.
(drawing)
And then maybe unify it a tiny
bit into
a general tone and clean it
up.
(drawing)
And to do this
the same thing with our half tones, clean them up a bit as well.
(drawing)
Our
areas of highlight.
(drawing)
And here
we can even get a little bit of a light on
that front plane of the masseter.
(drawing)
I think that's a break.
So why don't
we take
a break as well.
an end and
we're just going to keep
doing what we
we're doing up here. It seems though
some of these half tones are falling into some of the ones
I have here. And
it's not really allowing this area to read like
a clear ridge.
It's always nice to take a
look after a break because there's a lot that opens up
that your eye
was just not picking up
either because
it got tired or
even because maybe you weren't even looking at the,
you weren't attuned to
solving the same problem.
So here we can see
the actual structure of the
muscles of the frontal bone.
(drawing)
And you can take them all
the way up here and make sure that it's allowing you to -
like its giving you the form
of the skull on top.
(drawing)
And now I'm just sort of making sure that there's
a proportional - yeah, that seemed alright I just
I wanted to
kind of compare,
(drawing)
to kind of
double check one of those
primary measurements that you keep in mind
right as you're starting out but
that can get lost quite quickly as
you're working on things that are
a little specific
and you end up having certain parts
moving and large and
then it's all over the place.
(drawing)
Alright
so maybe
just in order to
kinda have,
(drawing)
kind of a more
sort of immediate completion,
begin to place the iris, the pupil,
and the highlight.
And what I recommend with the highlight is that you just sort of erase
in that area
and then you carve into it
making sure it's clean and sharp.
(drawing)
We don't want the iris to be perfectly outlined, we need to keep thinking
the edge of the iris just a little bit softer because
if not it looks like a glass eye.
(drawing)
And now that
highlight as well, it's quite -
it's a lot stronger than
I want it but, at first, just need to
get them in place.
(drawing)
Keep that eye in there
that's the hardest
part.
Keep working on the eye
but making sure to integrate it
and place it
into the eye, into the orbit.
Into the eye socket.
(drawing)
And then reintroduce a light onto the zygomatic
(drawing)
to make sure that the eye is inside.
And right now you might be asking and
kind of
slightly concerned by the fact that it does seem, at times, almost a little
too obvious. And that
is accurate.
After a certain point you do want to
sort of tie it back in
and make sure some parts
kind of blend in with the other
sort of more prominent structures.
(drawing)
And so the eye
is there but I don't -
I think we might -
we might come back to it and really make it
an accent a little later. But in the mean time, seeing as it's sort of
slowly coming into existence.
Now can't do one eye without the other even though the other eye does not need to be as
clear so there's certain parts here that can be
done with the eraser even because we have such small area
of light and they fall on
elements that we already have here. So here we have the thickness of
the lower eyelid and here you have
the top of the upper eyelid and
it just - the one thing thing you do have to keep in mind is when you do
see a tiny bit of light surrounded by
areas of darkness, they always appear
much lighter than they are.
Mainly because of the
contrast. So
you just want to keep that in mind and after making sure that everything is in
the right place, you can
tone it down again afterwards.
Not doing that right now but I will.
I wanna keep it in there so that I can see
a bit more clearly what's happening.
(drawing)
The masseter
will probably be toned away as part of the side plane.
(drawing)
So you see I do occasionally come back to used that large piece
of chalk much in the same way that I did earlier on.
Just to get a
large plane in place
a flat
tone to kind of
unify all these sort of smaller
topographical
changes.
(drawing)
And I think that
the earlobe can get one more coat of
tone
but I still don't
want to work on it too much. It's still sort of
a detail. So see you
almost - the interesting thing about this is that
the ear, for example and, you know, the eye, that it's
kind of - that's
one of the more enjoyable elements.
So you almost have to torture
yourself a small amount in order to
just keep avoiding these things that are
as
pleasurable as sort of just really spending time on a small
detail or something like that but keep away from it.
(drawing)
Though it is torture, I assure you it
will give you the desired result.
(drawing)
Larger forms online.
(drawing)
And here also if you want to accent
some area, a more obvious hatch
is a great way to do it.
(drawing)
Remember that that's where we're really going
to get the change
within
the front plane, towards
this area here.
The kind of, the most
anterior point of the head.
Most in front.
(drawing)
Alright so
we do need to separate the head from
the neck underneath, which is why earlier
I moved the neck in a bit so
it doesn't just continue the link of the head.
I didn't comment on it.
(drawing)
And right now
even though we did take the time to really see what was going on
here in the neck,
(drawing)
I'm afraid that
(drawing)
there's a lot happening there that's sort of taking away from
the larger
conception of the neck as a
cylindrical form.
(drawing)
So now it's time to maybe even things out just a bit
(drawing)
And see, I could put it all in there
and you still have all that we
spent time
on identifying
and then unify it in a general half tone.
And then introduce highlights that
go across multiple anatomical elements.
See so I continued that highlight on the sternal
cleidomastoid and then moved it onto
that sort of combination of the
clavicular head of the sternocleidomastoid and the
omohyoid.
(drawing)
And that I think is quite
helpful because it's toned down this whole area, bringing attention up here
and also allowing us to
really shine a light on this clavicle.
(drawing)
And now could be a nice time -
oh there it is, yeah. It happened again where we could
really see the clavicular head sort of stand out.
And you
can see that bit of
skin and the most external muscles
just kinda connecting that
area into a group there.
And
now I'm gonna begin to put some of
these creases in the
skin. The important thing is that you don't
necessarily copy them but you use them
to give you
and describe a form.
(drawing)
And it's important here
and it's almost sort of almost painterly
approach to just pay attention to
the quality of the edge
and the half tone on that clavicle.
(drawing)
In here too, some of the -
at the creases and the
skin are really going to help
us define the entire area of
the sternal notch
(drawing)
because I'm
sure you realize by now that
this whole - this
sternal notch in the strictly anatomical context
is of course that part at the upper part of
the manubrium but for our
purposes, I think it also incorporates
(drawing)
that the sort of the
entirety of the actual sternal notch
on the manubrium
as well as the two attachments of the
sternal heads of the sternocleidomastoid.
(drawing)
And
reinforcing that cast shadow and you can see here,
probably we can continue with the sternocleidomastoid but I don't think
that's necessary here. We can just allow it to
kinda fall away.
(drawing)
But in there it seems like a reasonable place
to make an accent using one of the occlusion -
this area of occlusion
(drawing)
sort of complete that upper edge of the
clavicle. And then the core shadow here
and then continue in a way that's really helpful
for us down there.
And see a lot of times I kinda get
carried away with
the shadow and sort of
I pull it out into the half tone
but then of course in order to
integrate it
correctly then I have to
erase out the half tone because initially it's too dark.
(drawing)
But see -
and up there I've toned down the highlights but
I'm going to
make them a little more of a contrast.
(drawing)
Okay so
we'll keep
working right here
(drawing)
and really
making sure that the head of the sternocleidomastoid reads
(drawing)
and even kind of
getting a turn there, a top edge that underneath
it all we could see the manubrium.
And of course we don't want
too much going on there. Now the one thing that
I did not place was the other
armpit. If this one's here then you just wanna see
where the other one is by taking it across
and it's not as important here because it's not one of the elements
we're really working on but that is
something you need to do
in a nude.
(drawing)
Okay
why don't we take
a break and then we'll get
to the ear and the shoulder.
(drawing)
But keep in mind that we need to
continue
the zygomatic arch in order to really
make sure the placement
of the ear is right.
(drawing)
So
every opportunity you get,
keep coming back to those important forms.
The forms of the skull.
But I think we're already.
to do some work on the ear right now.
So
why don't we begin with that
shadow
and half tone under the
antihelix
and I feel
like I don't want the ear to have too
much of the texture of the paper or of
the chalk, of the sanguine. I want
it to be a little bit smoother.
(drawing)
A little bit softer. And here's the
helix, let's get those
particular twists and turns that are so characteristic of
this particular ear.
(drawing)
And as you see right here, the anti
helix bifurcates
(drawing)
up here a little bit and
down here and the thing to remember is that you really
cannot do too much with the ear without those
highlights. Those highlights are going to give you those really
clean and sharp changes in
plane in the cartilage.
Because the ear is all cartilage.
(drawing)
So some of these
highlights should come in right away, or rather as soon
as possible, as soon as there's room for them.
But we're going to tone them down
eventually but in the mean time might as
well get them in place.
(drawing)
And those
overlaps can be quite
important and I pulled the head out a little bit over there but I'm gonna cut it back in now.
(drawing)
There's a little bit
of a shadow
off of - coming off of the cast shadow from
the helix onto
these areas.
(drawing)
And that -
just gonna continue with this outline,
making sure to have variations in pressure.
Not a lot of them,
don't really care too much about that
but enough.
And then to make sure that
there is that overlap that's clear as possible
of the earlobe.
(drawing)
And then even
here we're getting some of those creases in the
skin falling over the
tragus.
(drawing)
And here
the outlines seem a little too obvious so
a lot of these changes should probably be softer and
we can get them with
the
tonal changes as opposed
to simply outlining them.
(drawing)
And I'm gonna go back up top to the parietal
eminence a little bit and make sure it reads clear.
(drawing)
And also
maybe can get a little bit more of an outline and then -
and then it can
be lost a bit more.
(drawing)
And then making sure
that the antihelix is the
inside and we're catching a stronger light
on the helix up there. And I'm even getting
a little bit of a sort of a darker half
tone right behind it
and then the attachment of the ear
right there.
(drawing)
Okay, so the ear is in place. That does not mean it's
completed and we're not coming back to it but
I think let's move down here a little bit. Really
make sure that this area
reads. This is our other accent so I'm not so opposed to
having sort of more
obvious hatch marks
and just other
ways
of handling the medium in order
to get our attention
into this area.
(drawing)
But
the clavicle does need to be obvious but
now is the time to begin to really integrate it with
the insertions
and origins of the
muscles around it.
(drawing)
So not -
I'm kind of slowly inching towards
the deltoid itself
and it was sort of placed rather hastily
so there's going to be some modifications to the outlines
and all that.
The edges of the forms.
(drawing)
Yeah, occasionally I just -
I step away and
take a look at an element that's
almost entirely unrelated to the thing I'm working on
at the moment.
And then
let's
show our main elements of highlights and
the brighter half tones, even though
we've kind of already established a general
half tone over everything by now,
so tiny little piece at a time,
depending on where we need it, we're gonna be sorta
pulling
out some of these contrasts.
(drawing)
That's a cast
shadow that we need. And so in order to make these half tones
read a little bit more like height, we're
going to be cleaning up
some areas of half tone and making sure our shadows
read, for example here.
(drawing)
And a lot of times the creases,
the skin don't necessarily have to be
sort of observed and drawn in
they can be imitated by a hatch
(drawing)
and it's important not to take the creases all the way.
(drawing)
Start them off,
accent them in one or two
areas
and then
remove them.
(drawing)
And equally important
are going to be the ones up here on the frontal bone
because they're going to give you
the form
of the frontal
bone itself. So we can put put a view in already
and just
see how it can give you
the
(drawing)
changes in
plane at every
time it changes direction, that line.
And then in some cases
maybe we even want - you don't even need to observe them you just actually
continue with - you just kind of go along the form you already have.
(drawing)
And I'm not counting, I'm just -
we just need enough
of this to kind of
make
him more alive on the page.
(drawing)
And then
here use them to really give
us an edge, a very specific edge,
on the terminator.
(drawing)
And you don't need to continue
past that point.
(drawing)
We can do a few more here
and the ones up top continue
for longer. And then in a lot of areas
if you squint you can only really
see them
in areas of higher contrast, so around the highlight.
(drawing)
And it gives us an opportunity to place
that highlight a little more intricately, not so much
just on this area of intermediary
plane between the front and the side
but
actually have smaller highlights adding up to
that large one that we need.
(drawing)
And then up here we could almost go to the
opposite way. We can almost
establish all of those creases with
the eraser.
A mild hatch will probably
complete that illusion.
(drawing)
And here I do want -
and see so I'm beginning to feel that we're closer
to completion, mainly because I'm not -
I feel like I'm not able to spend too much time in one area without
moving to another so clearly
the whole thing's beginning to come together a bit more.
(drawing)
And you'll see that you can't actually
erase some of these outlines
(drawing)
but honestly I kind of,
I like when there are a number of outlines, it gives us -
it makes it obvious that
the artist
was
trying
to get at something
concrete and so
had to attempt
it a few times and not every attempt
was a
successful one. And I think there's something
very human about that, it makes it a lot more interesting to
look at artwork where that's obvious.
(drawing)
That kind of a
pursuit.
Michelangelo is a great example
of this.
(drawing)
So all I mean is
keep all your outlines.
(drawing)
And
don't attempt to hide any of the struggles
you might have had.
(drawing)
So here we have
one of those portions that we spoke
about of the
accromial
portion
of the deltoid, whereas here we have the
anterior portion.
(drawing)
The only time I really tend to hatch with the
eraser is when I want to get
a softer edge
in between a few half tones
(drawing)
and a few of the creases over there but
especially we haven't
spoken about the arms
yet but right here we have
the bicep. You do have that little bit
of skin that you can see there which I think
is so exciting.
(drawing)
And the highlight on
the pectoralis right there.
Then I'm not being as specific
with the pectoralis right now.
(drawing)
I don't know if I'll do any more there actually.
There's a time when that hierarchy
of elements and hierarchy of completion
(drawing)
there are - I think it's
quite interesting when you have whole areas of the
drawing that look as though
you've only working on them for half an hour.
And then there are
other parts
that you've spent
most of your time on and I think that that's also kind of a
lot more interesting for the viewer. Now
here I like what's happening but I'm
not sort of getting
the entirety of the protrusion of that whole area.
(drawing)
And so I think that has to do with
larger half tones.
(drawing)
I do have a cast shadow
falling from the arm onto the ribcage
but I don't want it to be pitch black.
(drawing)
See here there is
a cast shadow that's coming from the head onto the
shoulder here but it's
not one that needs that sharp edge of the cast shadow.
(drawing)
Just a little bit of light in the few places
to make sure we have the form of the
deltoid separated from the form of the pectoralis.
(drawing)
And yeah I am
going to go back into that
arm.
In the mean time we just need to get a little
more happening here and we can get
the sternum in a little more clearly and even
the attachment of the pectoralis
(drawing)
and some of these edges
and lines and alignments that I had here beginning to stand out
a little bit more than
they need to at this point as we're sort of
coming closer to completion.
(drawing)
And now I've removed
those lights that I put in
and I'm going to bring them back
in.
(drawing)
But then here
I want a really clear outline
on the other zygomatic
and now that we're at this point you can see that you can
achieve a sharpness of edge with an outline but you can also achieve it
by simply placing an area of tone
and just erasing right up against it. So you still have a
sharp edge but no outline.
So you still have a sharp edge but no outline
and that's quite
an interesting way to control the viewers
attention.
I think that's break.
So we're getting much closer to
completion, why don't we take a break
and come back and see what we have.
(drawing)
let's try
to complete this. And
as you know there's not
much of a change in approach, even when you're completing
anything. You're still
sort of moving around and trying to see if all of those
main important sort of primary
elements are in there and as
clearly defined as possible.
(drawing)
Just going to
set the timer up, sorry.
(drawing)
Making sure we get a good read on some of our -
some of our shadows.
(drawing)
Clarity on the terminators.
Here
I would like a sharp edge
without a line. So
we're going from outline to sharp edge, outline to sharp edge.
(drawing)
And here
maybe even to get a softer edge
but we still can
clarify
a bit with the eraser, not too much.
Here we can take that
outline and bring it
into the shadows there, into the
areas of reflected light,
making sure
we're getting the plane that's right
here on that side.
(drawing)
And some of these areas,
that little bit
into and make them organic and softer.
(drawing)
Make sure that eye really reads now,
has all the accents that we could possible want,
and then this right here is
a plane that's really begun to sweep under
so
we can go and reinforce that as well.
(drawing)
Just gonna place
a little bit of a
tone
underneath there
(drawing)
and make
sure that some of the brighter
half tones and even possibly highlights. They're not actually
highlights, but we can push them up so that
they almost read like highlights.
This is
an area of half tone that
I felt was getting too dark.
So now it's just
moving all around and making adjustments.
(drawing)
And here I just wanna continue
a little bit of a tone so that we get
the full roundness of the orbit.
(drawing)
And some more
light on some of the
side
plane of the nose.
Just
going to add that
highlight in the eye again and see how it feels.
I think it feels alright.
I don't think it needs to be pushed down
any more than that.
(drawing)
And to get the top plane into
a little bit more of a half tone also won't hurt.
(drawing)
A moment of clarity
on some of our small, form defining cast shadows
(drawing)
and making sure we have
overlaps on
(drawing)
the
other side of the head as well as all of our accents
that we have here and we spend time on.
We need to at least hint at them on the other side.
(drawing)
And maybe spend
a little bit of time on some of these small, tiny little
intricate
details that just do add so much.
(drawing)
And once again, sort of
adding some
variation in that edge.
(drawing)
And now
I'm just going to squint and take a look at the whole head
because now might be
a time to unify
(drawing)
some of our half tones even further.
(drawing)
And I
don't think that
we need too many harder lines right now, so if they do appear
in the course of
working on the head in general
(drawing
we're just gonna need to go back and soften them a
little bit.
(drawing)
I'll go for that sharp line but that's an occlusion
shadow in there. Nice crease
that can really bring out that edge.
And then
even some in here can made a little more
obvious
even though they might not look like that in life.
But we just need to get some of these clear
details, really make
these accents stand out.
We can bring a light into it.
That area underneath the nostril.
(drawing)
Mark, turn your head slightly to the - thank you so much.
(drawing)
And then to use
this cast shadow
falling on the eye to give it
a bit more definition and form.
(drawing)
Yeah I - and I think that kind of push
that I gave to all the areas
and shadows really beginning to make
the half tone seem like light. And see that's
kind of one of the advantages of working
with this chalk is that
(drawing)
you spend most of the time working in the
half tones
and then sort of
apply your
shadows where you need them. But because you're working
in the half tones, you are forced to be thinking of the
forms that those half tones are describing.
(drawing)
Okay so
I like what we have up there and I
there's still a few places might be
good to accent - once again even though we don't see anything there, I don't
think it'll hurt to get a little bit
more happening on the
angle of the jaw.
And here
on the chin
and the front planes
and now
to kinda quickly polish up these areas here.
I think we have our clavicle
and we have the
outline of the trapezius though it could be cleaner.
(drawing)
I would leave this
arm where it is but maybe give a little bit more to
(drawing)
the shoulder
(drawing)
but not too much.
And I'm going to clean up the head
and these areas that are smudged here
but
not being
overly precious with them is important.
(drawing)
It's just important how that edge of the head
reads against the paper.
And then,
as always, we come back to some of these
really important elements, like the
clavicles.
The sternocleidomastoid.
(drawing)
Really making sure to
have some of those smaller highlights
in order to
amplify those areas of anatomical
muscular insertion.
(drawing)
And here we even have a little bit of a detail of
the vein on the arm
and I'm hesitant to put it in
but I do think if it's just hinted at, not going all the way
down to the end of the page because we don't have that anyway
but just a little bit
(drawing)
can be quite exciting.
(drawing)
We're not
worried too much about the deltoid
here.
The pectoralis, I'm sorry.
(drawing)
So
the approach
in these areas of -
in these areas of not so much
importance as a lot looser.
(drawing)
Just have to make sure to have the
acromion
and the end of the scapula
and clavicle, yes.
The acromion is the end
of the spine of the scapula.
(drawing)
And now just those last
few creases
and details.
(drawing)
Accents, in a sense the hardest part to explain
(drawing)
but hopefully there's a little
bit of clarity you're getting from
watching me and
seeing the areas I'm focusing on.
(drawing)
Alright
I think -
ah,
I always get ahead of myself with that and then I can't
just end it I have to keep
sort of coming
back to these tiny
areas that I just can't help but
pick up when I'm in this kind of
state of mind
But honestly I think it's alright.
And I think
that we were able to explore
and sort of put into action all of that anatomical
information.
on your 20 by 24 inch board, use
the photographs of Mark to draw a highly rendered portrait
drawing in either graphite or sanguine, making sure to focus
on the skeletal and muscular anatomy of the head, neck, and
shoulder girdle. If you have access to a model, do
a portrait of the model from life.
Free to try
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1. Portrait Assignment Overview
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Watch the whole lesson with a subscription
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2. Portrait Assignment Instructor Demonstration Part 1
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3. Portrait Assignment Instructor Demonstration Part 2
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4. Portrait Assignment Instructor Demonstration Part 3
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5. Portrait Assignment Instructor Demonstration Part 4
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6. Portrait Assignment Instructor Demonstration Part 5
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7. Portrait Assignment Instructor Demonstration Part 6
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8. Portrait Assignment Instructions
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