CHAPTER 4 | EARS

The ear is beautiful and intricate and shaped differently for everyone. A bit mysterious with all those cavities in it. Here I show a simplified model.

Exercise 1: draw a right or left ear as above.

Everyone’s ears, like eyes, mouths and noses, are different. The position of the ears can be erect or slightly angled. And not everyone has an earlobe. Also one person has bigger ears than the other. They can stick out further or lie flatter against the head. Take a look some time at the differences between the ears of, for example, classmates, family and friends.

Exercise 2: The ear really gets its mysterious shape through the use of shadow. Try drawing an ear with shadow.

Sometimes whimsical shapes like ears can inspire other drawings.

EARS IN COMICS

Exercise 3: Comic artists simplify the ear to suit their figures and drawing style. Here are a few examples to redraw.

Tintin                                                                                 Lambik from Spike en Suzy (Willy and Wanda)

Manga figure                                                                            Detective, Blake & Mortimer

THE PEOPLE WITH GIANT EARS

Ancient fantasy stories wrote about a people with extremely large ears: Panotti. With their ears they could even protect their body from the cold. Some say they lived on an island above Scotland, others call South Asia. I saw them carved in stone above the entrance of a medieval church in the French town of Vezelay.

EXTRA: Draw one or more figures with giant ears, maybe even greater than in my examples.

Panotti woman, cathedral of Vezelay

 

In an illustration by MIKKO (Mikko Kuiper) we see such an ear beautifully drawn with deep shadows. A face mask hangs loosely over the ear. The illustration was made for an article by anthropologist Ginny Mooy about the coronavirus (NRC, January 15, 2022).