Traditional Drawing - Week 8 Year 2

 Week 8 - Human Head Construction: Plaster Head

This week, there was an emphasis on building on last weeks work of the human skull construction to create an accurately proportioned human head from the reference of a plaster head.

Visual Reference:

As per usual, there were 2 sitting to choose from. I was sat in more of a 3 quarter angle this session to hopefully avoid the issue I had last week where all my values were somewhat flattened just because of the extreme profile angle, and as such it meant that I could only see one of the sittings this week. I was ok with this however because I was drawn to the more obvious planes on the sitting I could see in comparison to the other head as I thought it would help my brain understand the forms of the face better and to aid in making a more artistically interesting final piece with obvious form changes and planes.

Reference from sitting angle, desaturated

Preparatory Sketches:

To prepare for my larger final piece, I chose to make some quick sketches to warm up and to learn the angles of the face better. I took a couple of attempts at this, always starting with a large circular shape for the cranium with a oval for the "mask" of the face so that I could transfer these techniques to a bigger scale with relative ease. by the second sketch, I was feeling a lot more confident and warmed up ready for the final drawing.

Thumbnail Sketches, first attempt on the left and second on the right.

Initial Sketch:

I followed the same process mentioned for my thumbnail in this larger scale, however noticed a few issues as I was going along. I was struggling with the amount the forehead protruded, and the entire face felt quite lopsided. At this point I spoke with Teo and she said that the proportion between the lower eyelid and the top of the nostril was too tall, but that the mouth and the nose shading was working well. To try and resolve the proportional problem, I lowered the eye by a small amount per line, and I also had to extend the Jaw so that the jaw protruded more in line with my forehead. From there, I worked through and added more shading to the whole illustration.

Sketch with proportional issues (marked with small indication lines) and light shading

Progress after first session:

At this point, I was overall happy with the values and proportions in the face and wanted to add the contrast seen in the reference by adding a dark, contrasting background around the silhouette of the head. I thought this would really accentuate the material properties of the head being a white plaster cast, and I think with the texture of the pencil helped push the piece to be more striking. I had been sat looking at this piece for so long I had not noticed the issue of the size of the face being too big for the back of the head - an issue I think that came from not starting with the facial proportions and instead trying to fit the proportions in a shape. so I will have to extend the cranium of the head to compensate. I have an issue where now that I have added in the darker outline, I will have to erase a lot of lead and I will likely still have eraser ghosts, so I will need to edit my final piece to remove these obvious lines as well as maybe fix some minor value problems.

Progress after first session

Final Piece & Conclusion:

I am really happy with how these proportional final fixes have transformed this piece/ It really reads better as a human head, and I am very proud of it. I am glad I kept the geometric planes on the head also as I will likely use this piece and this process to inform when we eventually do life drawing for example, especially when breaking down complex areas such as the eyes and even the planes in the chin. The contrast with the background helps make the highlights on the cheek and the forehead more 3D. I will remember next time to spend more effort proportioning not only the elements of the face but also the face with the head to avoid the deformation I had this week.

Final Piece