Head Drawing - Emily Blunt

    This drawing was also part of the week 4 assignment I submitted for the Head Drawing Class I'm taking.  Just like in my Hugh Jackman drawing, I'm showing here the drawing stages that I've learned from the class so far.

  

      It starts with the lay-in of the generic head from week 1. Then the Reilly method rhythm lines from this week's lesson were drawn on top of it. Those lines also served as planar and anatomical guides as well.  After that, the features and shadow shapes were added.  Followed by the adding of  dark tones on the shadow shapes. This stage was where most of my time was spent. Likeness was recognizable already at this point. After this stage, adding some light gradations was easier to figure out. The rest of the rendering was finished in a short time after that.

    

   

Next week would be the final week of the class and it would be about facial features and rendering. Watch out for my assignment postings of those here.

Head Drawing - Hugh Jackman

        So for the past few weeks, I had been taking a class that gradually introduced me to the Reilly Head method.  Having drawn a few head assignments where I learned to separate the shadow shapes from the light shapes, it's now much easier for me to grasp  the concept of the Reilly Head .  Those multiple lines, which can be confusing, represents the head planes, anatomical structure and rhythm lines.  Those lines really help in rendering the form.

    After learning the Reilly Head, those rhythm lines seem very obvious  whenever I look at faces now.

Head Drawing - Alan Rickman

        *** There's an updated version of this, see here.***

         After Bruce Willis, it's Alan Rickman in his  memorable role as Hans Gruber from the film Die Hard.  He's got a nice shadow shapes in this photo, that drawing his likeness became easier to capture. Although I wasn't quite sure when I first started with the basic head construction.  I skipped the outlining of some of the features and just went straight to sculpting with tones. It took me awhile but eventually I did manage to get his likeness.   I kept the values limited to three, with some hint of whites in some of the hotspots. Plus a light grey background to frame him nicely. Cool, huh?

Head Drawing - Bruce Willis

 ***There's an updated version of this, see here.***

    This was one of the head drawings for my week 3 assignment in the Head Drawing class I'm taking, rendered with 3 to 5 values only.  Still not concerned with the eyes and mouth, it's amazing how effective this method is in drawing the likeness based on the dark patterns of the head.

      I used the basic generic head construction I learned from week 1, and then  modified it according to Bruce Willis' head shape and proportion. Followed by the mapping of the dark shadow shapes, avoiding the eyes and mouth for now, using only three values, the paper's value for the light, mid-tone grey and the darkest dark.   To add some polish, some whites are added for the hotspots, and black background to frame the whole head.

Head Drawing No. 5 - Can You Tell Who This Is?

This is now my 5th head sketch, where I draw the likeness through shapes. Even without the eyes and nose, this face is easily recognizable.  This head drawing method made my previous portrait drawing using the grid system seem obsolete.   This method is all freehand, a more enjoyable method for me.

Head Drawing No. 4 - Can You Tell Who This Is?

        While the previous three head sketches (see here, here and here), had been a struggle and took each a day for me to finish, in this sketch I was able to do a quicker lay-in almost effortlessly.  This took less time that I was able to do two more head sketches after this,

       Could be that this head had a easily recognizable shapes, or  I'm getting used to this drawing method.  Either way, I delightfully realized that this method of constructing the head is effectively training me to focus on the general overall shapes first, ignoring the eyes and mouth for the meantime, while some likeness must be evident at this stage first, before proceeding to add the facial features and  final rendering.

          I'm liking my progress in this class thus far...
      

Head Drawing No. 3 - Can You Tell Who This Is?

     This week 2 assignment required  me to do twenty-five of these heads.  As with the previous two sketches, getting the right shapes took time. I was already doubting myself if I'll be able to do more than five at the rate I was going. I was only managing one head a day at that point.

     My first  and second head  sketches conformed to the generic head construction easily than this third one. Miscalculating the angle too much while laying-in the generic head was my problem. The top of the hair confused me with the perspective of it.   So I had to carefully observe the slight angle tilt of the head and try not to overdo it.

     Getting the right shapes also took a lot of time. A wrong shape easily destroy the likeness. In the end, I'm still not sure if  I achieved the likeness. What do you think?

Head Drawing No. 2 - Can You Tell Who This Is?

    Another one of my no-eyes-no-mouth head sketch.  As I mentioned in my previous post, this is the lay-in stage where I decide that if  I can't get the likeness at this point, going further won't help either.

   The more handsome the face is, the harder it is to get the likeness, It was suggested that getting an "uglier" face would be easier and lessen the pressure of trying to get it perfectly. I should have listen to that suggestion. Because this was such a struggle.  After  multiple starts and stops, erasing and revising, this is the closest to the likeness I was able to manage. 

   What do you think?

Head Drawing - Drawing Likeness Through Shapes

        In my last post, I mentioned taking a head drawing class, where in the first assignment, I learned to draw the proportions of a generic head in different angles.  The following week, using that generic head as the standard of measure, the lesson was about drawing the likeness of a famous face based on it's overall shape and silhouette.  Focusing only on the general shapes, the eyes and mouth were not drawn.  One should be able to tell whose likeness this is at this point. If not, there's no point in continuing.

        This was the first head of  twenty  I finished, which took me hours, if not more than a day, to get this to resemble my subject even remotely.    What do you think?

       

 

Back To Basics - Tedious Drawing Drills

     Two weeks ago, I started taking a short class in digital head drawing. First week's assignment was about proportion, using a modified Reilly head construction method. It's all about measuring, grids, and careful constructions. A very tedious type of drawing, but an important drill if one desires mastery of  drawing the human head from memory.

   

 

    But before I even began drawing these heads, I found that I was unable to do a good circle freehand.  The circle was important as it would serve as the basis of measurement for the whole head. Not a loosely-drawn circle but a well-proportioned ones drawn in a more controlled way. As an animator, it was taught and drilled into our heads to draw loosely from the shoulders and not the wrist to get that nice sweeping strokes you'll see in most of our drawings. This drawing habit made most of my drawings rough and loose. But in this instance, drawing a basic circle, unsurprisingly, became an endless struggle.   So for the first week, I did nothing else but draw circles until I managed to do it well enough before starting the assignment..

First few attempts in drawing circles.

Kept at it, but still loose and inaccurate

      

     I modified the way I draw the circle, that instead of one sweeping stroke, I drew point marks that served as guides to help keep the circles in correct proportion, then drew four shorter arcs to complete the shape.

Carefully-drawn circles

Surprisingly good results after a week

       After a week of this tediousness, I was quite pleased with my improvement. Tackling the first crucial step of the assignment wasn't  much of a struggle anymore after that.   One lesson learned that week, don't underestimate the effectiveness of those boring, tedious drawing drills. They're like eating veggies and working out.  I'm most always than not, surprised with how much improvement I managed to achieve in just a short time for doing such.