Joan Jett
© 2023 T HEADCharcoal. 3rd attempt, had difficulty with spatial relationship in face, looking for a system.
Polyvios Animations
Good morning, T.
Nicest work on your face's movement, fluidity, spaces, forms, and of course, the facial proportions and angles(facial relationships). I love the control and intuition in your face from imagination, but the face from reference, I'd say, when in doubt, always go back to the reference again. Would you care to just do two 10 minute faces and expressions of any type?
As a result, if you memorize any and every facial expression, then you can, shall, and will become the most strongest and the most ambitious in terms of your fertile imagination. For most details on drawing facial expressions, please look up any book on drawing faces and heads by Andrew Loomis, now available as free PDFs. Here is the link.
Good luck from all of us.
Looking good....
Spatial relationship in a face... easiest abstraction for the human head/face is generally accepted to be the one by Andrew Loomis. His OG publication "Fun with a Pencil" is available as free pdf.
Adapting it to draw from reference instead from imagination needs a bit of practice, but it provides good relations for placing main features like eyes, nose, chin, ears,...
Lots of artists work with it, because it is very simple and effective.
If you want a full atlas of all the planes and curves around the cheeks, temple, eyebrows, etc... it's a journey... I am currently testing Frank Reilly for myself, Steve Huston, George Bridgman, Michael Hampton are also known for their abstractions of the head. And there is the head model by John Asaro, which is often bought as a 3d sculpture, but can ofc also be memorized.
Thanks for your thoughtful and comprehensive reply. I will check out those references. So much stuff on YouTube but not really what I'm after. Looking for sculptural portraits I guess.
Much appreciated 👍
My experience with abstractions so far: they are all designed to draw idealized faces from imagination, and the first step is to repeat them by drawing from imagination to learn to instinctively trust them.
But when you draw from reference, well natural faces are distinct from ideal faces, and the difference is what produces their individuality and the likeness to the reference. So I try to apply the ideal concepts repeatedly to real faces, to learn where to distrust the natural face, and thereby what, where and when to measure.
The basic idea of modern constructional drawing is to always find the big idealized forms first, and then to applicate details to them like hanging decorations onto a christmas tree. But I think, we also have to be able to anticipate the details in advance, and that doesn't work from a logical concept, but only by amassing enough experience to build up our instincts.