Chapter 1 | OUR HEAD FROM THE FRONT
About 43,000 years ago, a ‘Spanish’ Neanderthal saw a human face in the form of a small stone, with two dents at the top for the eyes and one dent at the bottom for a mouth. With his/her fingerprint in red dye for a nose he/she turned the stone into a self-portrait of it, as it were.
I think everyone has drawn a face at some point in their life. A round head with eyes, a nose and a mouth is enough. The circular emojis on mobile phones don’t even need a nose!
A more realistic head from the front is roughly shaped like an egg. The pointed side of the egg is our chin. You can see this in the shape of the skull from the front
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Exercise 1: Draw the oval shape of an egg. If necessary, improve the shape without erasing (right). 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. 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 too angularly. Of course, some have broader shoulders than others.
POSITION OF THE HEAD, NECK AND SHOULDERS:
If you want to draw someone from a photo or in real life, it is important to immediately pay attention to the position of the head on the shoulders. In the photo of Christiane Felscherinow, known for the book and the film We children of Banhof Zoo (1981), you might quickly forget that her head and neck are slightly slanted, while that is very characteristic (see the vague assisting lines that indicate this).
Exercise 4: Choose one or more close-up photos and draw in the same way as above, only the position of the head, neck and shoulders, without the face yet.
EXTRA: Our head is not only roughly shaped like an egg but also like an acorn with the hat still on it. If you feel like it, create your own figures with heads like acorns.
