Chapter 1 | OUR HEAD FROM THE FRONT
I think everyone at least once in his/her life, often as a child, has drawn a face. A circle with eyes, a nose and a mouth will do. Emojis on cell phones don’t even need a nose!
To learn to draw a face more realistically, we start with the shape of the head. Our head from the front is roughly shaped like an egg. For us, the pointed side of the egg is the chin.
Exercise 1: Draw the oval shape of an egg. If necessary, improve the shape without erasing. Watch the lesson Helpful Drawing Tips, Level 1, Chapter 2, for relaxed drawing of shapes such as ovals.
Exercise 2: Draw an egg head of at least 10 centimeters high, with a neck and shoulders as in the example. Then draw a very light horizontal and vertical line through the center of the head. You’re going to use these assisting construction lines in the next chapter for the construction of the face. Check the horizontal line, it can easily be too high or too low.
Exercise 3: now give the head a neck and shoulders like in the following drawing.
Here once more the head with a neck and shoulders. The arch from the neck down is the front side. The light gray arch upwards is the back of the neck, which of course you cannot see from the front. The shoulders are not drawn too angularly. Of course, some have broad shoulders and others narrow shoulders.
Position of the head, neck and shoulders:
If you want to draw someone from a photo or in real life, it is good to pay attention to the position of the head on the shoulders. In the photo of Christiane Felscherinow, known for the book (1978) and the film We children of Banhof Zoo (1981) , you might quickly forget that her head and neck are slightly slanted, while that is characteristic (see the vague assisting lines that indicate this). If you try to draw her face when the basic position of the head is wrong, it will become difficult to get it right.
Exercise 2: choose a close up foto of somebody and try to draw only the position of the head, neck and shoulders, without any details.
EXTRA: Our head is not only shaped like an egg but also like an acorn with the hat still on it. If you like, make up your own figures with heads like acorns. Note the small hatches (curved lines) in the hat that follow the round shape.
In reality, heads of course do not always have exactly the same egg shape. Heads can be narrower, wider, rounder or even block-shaped. A striking block-shaped head, for example, has the dictator of North Korea, Kim Yong-un. This is further reinforced by the typical angular hairstyle.
