Guidelines For Pencil Portrait Drawing – Locating Skull Markers
A pencil portrait drawing from life starts with the “striking” of the arabesque. Striking the arabesque means drawing the outer contour of the head with the accurate proportions, shape, and thecorrect symmetry.
Once you have drawn a reasonably correct arabesque it is time to situate the main landmarks of the head. That means that we will accurately situate the most essential places of the head. These places will then be used as references for mapping out the rest of the head features.
Here is something that may assist you with this task: work with your eyes a bit out-of-focus. This is called observing with a “soft eye”. Somehow this makes it easier to accurately resolve forms and proportions. It also assists you with suppressing the set concepts we all have of certain objects.
Let us presuppose that we are working from a 3/4 head pose.
* The Brow Ridge – is the first significant landmark. To locate the brow ridge you must first take your best guess at where you think it is and only then test it by sighting.
Note that to train your eyes it is better to first guess distances, angles, etc. and check them second. There is nothing to gain from pre- measuring.
Sighting means to use your pencil with fixed arm and checking distances along the pencil with your thumb and index finger and one eye closed.
So then, first sight from the bottom of the chin to a spot on the brow ridge (just choose an random spot on the ridge. But once chosen you should stick with it.
Now hoist your pencil so that your thumb is on your spot on the brow ridge and make note of where your pencil tip is. It should be a tiny distance above the top of the head. Mark on your drawing where you can best place that spot above the head. This point is called the “check-point”.
Note that whenever there is a choice, you should always measure the smallest length because doing so tends to be more accurate.
Your spot on the brow ridge should, if it was placed accurately, be exactly halfway between the bottom of the chin and your check-point. If it is not – then improve the placement of your brow ridge.
* Jaw Hinge – Now you can tag the width of the head. In the 3/4 view the hinge of the jaw is a critical landmark. Again, take your best estimate then check by sighting horizontally from the hinge of the jaw to the outer edge of the cheek bone and vertically relating that measure from the bottom of the chin.
* Top Nose Bone – Since we have already positioned the brow ridge we now only have to guess a short distance to fix the top of the nasal bone. If you spotted the hinge of the jaw accurately, it should equal the distance from the bottom of the chin to the nasal bone. If you are off a bit, then correct the placement of the hinge of the jaw. Again, presuppose that the smallest length estimated is the accurate one.
Now that these prime landmarks are positioned you can further work out the arabesque. I find it best to further resolve only the back, less, part of the head at this early stage.
* Facial Angle – Finally, you have to situate the facial angle which is the center line of the face. Draw a slightly arching line from the middle of the mental tubercle up through the center of the brow ridge.
The positioning of the facial angle is very significant. You have to feel your way through this as there is no way to accurately measure it.
Once the facial angle is positioned proceed with drawing the arabesque carefully observing the shape of the mouth region, the forehead, and all other features that are expressed in the shape of the arabesque.
With this, we have positioned all the crucial landmarks that will help us with the mapping of the rest of the features such as the ears and nose.
Do you want to learn the secrets of pencil portrait drawing? Download my brand new free pencil portrait drawing tutorial here: pencil portrait tutorial.
Remi Engels is a pencil portrait artist and oil painter and skilled drawing teacher. See his work at graphite pencil portraits.
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