The face
Eyes
In this work I'm going to practice the components of the face. I need to understand how the structures of the face work as individual parts and together.
Some time ago I bought Drawing Facial Features with Gary Faigin from Craftsy and I've based my drawings around this.
My first drawings are of the eye. I used smooth paper and covered it with charcoal then used charcoal and a putty rubber to create tone. And yes, I know my drawings look rather like a duck!
This is more of a diagram than a drawing but it has enabled me to think of the eye in its bony socket and try to get a curve to the lids.
The first three eyes here are of young women and the fourth is an older woman. Once again they are in charcoal.
I wanted to try using graphite:
The bottom image is the eyelid of a newborn baby. It looks formless and fairly flat.
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| Mens' eyes |
As I have soon to draw my own face I thought I should have a sneaky go:
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| My eyes |
I am very fair and there is little sign of either eyelashes or eyebrows unless I wear make up.
This drawing is slightly awry because my left eye should be a bit bigger.
Noses
I have found drawing noses quite tricky. Although they improved the more I did they started to look fairly ridiculous. I put some surrounding features in to try to give myself some landmarks.
First I looked at the structure and how it changes throughout the length of the nose. I used a mixture of pencil and charcoal.
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| Using Gary Faigen again |
I have learned that men and women have slightly different noses. Men tend to have larger nostrils and more bumps on the profile of the nose. The noses of children develop as they grow but one thing I have become aware of is that noses continue to change throughout life and can become a very dominant feature in old age.
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| Using photo reference |
My family have very distinctive noses and as a young woman I was very self conscious of it (still am if I'm honest). I decided to bite the bullet and have a try on a charcoal background.
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| This is me in charcoal and chalk |
These are a bit better than the early noses I drew but my tonal work needs improving.
The mouth
Once again I followed my Gary Faigin course. On this course he always works in charcoal so that's what I've done in the first instance for each feature.
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| The lips in repose |
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| The smile (charcoal) Looking downwards on the mouth (pencil) |
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| My mouth |
As previously I got better with practise.
Eyebrows
Eyebrows vary enormously and are bushier in men and as we age. They run across the top of the eye socket and can be very expressive as they move with the muscles of the face. My own eyebrows are very fair and hardly visible. Frida Kahlo had famously prominent eyebrows meeting in the middle of her nose.
Ears
Ears are like fingerprints - no two are the same. I found these hard to draw.
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| Ears |
Hair
I think that a portrait could be perfect but ill drawn hair could make it a completely failure. In my attempts at drawing hair I have taken the line that tone is the key to getting texture. I have drawn hair going in the way it grows or is styled.
I think I might be ready to draw a whole face now.
I didn't want to offend anyone by drawing an unflattering portrait so I used a website called Portraits for Drawing (2). Just as well really because this qualifies for the worst piece of work I've ever done! It's as though I made great effort to disregard everything I've learned about proportion. Best consigned to the bin but things can only get better. It's done in pencil in my A4 sketchbook in pencil.
I thought I'd better have another try and this time I went back to charcoal and it's better. I used a little white chalk and dark graphite in the hair.
This time I took the precaution of making some guide marks before I launched into the drawing and it certainly helped. With some trepidation I followed the manual advice and began with the features rather than an oval face and found it much easier than I had anticipated.
I find it more possible to get tones with charcoal
(1) http://www.craftsy.com/
(2) http://portraitsfordrawing.tumblr.com/
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