Notes from Tuesday, October 13th

Drawing #6

-Need good quality largish photo of a face facing front- preferably black and white

1.   10 min. Review homework

a.   Collage- 

c.   New portrait- Choose a photo of a face you like.

2.   Face proportions- 15 min.

a. Proportion is how the parts of the face relate to each other. It’s the correct size and placement of the eyes, mouth and nose. If you mess up the shape of the head and the location of the features, you will not capture a likeness.

1)   As a rule, the face has a more or less oval shape. Draw an oval.

2)   Start with guide lines:

] Eye line: Most eyes are at about the center of the face. Measure and draw an eye-line.

] Nose line: Make a light mark higher than halfway between the eyeline and chin line.

] Mouth: Measure the distance between the nose and eye lines and place the mouth line the same distance above the chin.

3)   Facial features: With the construction lines as references, start blocking in the facial features.

] Most eyes are about one eye-width apart with another eye-width on each side. How close is the edge of the eye to the edge of the face? (Common problem: eyes too small.) Mark where your eyes belong on the eye-line.

] Mark the nose’s outer boundary. Measure down from the corners of the eyes. 

] Lips: This line isn’t straight- what does the curve look like? How wide are lips? 

] Ears: The tops begin at about eye level.

3.   Charcoal sketch in the manner of Matisse:

a.   Matisse said that he didn’t paint a subject literally, but relayed the emotion it evoked for him; i.e. expressive vs realistic.

b.   Draw your face again rapidly, using charcoal. Try to get this drawing to fill the paper, and to make it as carelessly as you can. It’s easy to lose your nerve at this stage, but if the work is too tight now, there will be little hope for it later. “Exactitude,” said Matisse, “is not truth.”

c.   Before you even get a chance to be critical of your first charcoal sketch, wipe it off with a rag or a piece of kitchen towel and start again. You can’t force the marks you need for this type of work, they have to arrive in their own time – even if they take all day. Try to use fewer and fewer strokes- Matise would work and re-worked in this manner, with progressively fewer and fewer strokes.

d.   After sketching and rubbing the figure out several times, your last drawing should be a distillation of all of the previous ones. 

e.   You can continue on this paper or transfer to another using graphite paper.

4. Homework: Work on portraits