Cartooning The Head And Figure Pdf

[Nu Alessio]

Forexample, the distance from the top of the head to the waist is one third. The distance between the waist and the knees is another third. The distance between the knees and the bottom of the feet is another third. This creates an elongated figure who is nine heads tall.

But if you want to ignore the head completely, because you, like me, want to draw people with huge heads, than you can measure from the neck to the crotch is the same distance as from the crotch to the bottom of the foot. (Yellow Lines Above.)

On the left above is part of the B&B series. As you can see, she had the same distance from the top of her neck to her crotch as she does to the buttom of her foot. In short, she is proportional, ignoring her huge head.

The first lesson was all about gesture, which is very common for figure drawing, but something I never really thought of from just the "head" point of view. I won't recount the whole lesson, but here are the items I found interesting or new:

The second lesson started getting into defining more features. While it's easy to get lost in facial details Huston's suggestion was to try and avoid minutiae and think of the face as a squared eqq or a box. A few more points from this lesson:

The nose is a very tricky collection of shapes to draw or even sculpt, which I found out years ago when I was deep into ZBrush. There are tons of plane changes and how all those bits fit and overlap becomes very important to understand. The highlights:

Aaaand we're finally done with beginning constructive head drawing. I really enjoyed this class, looking back on the notes and the assignments has been helpful too. I'll put up the second half of the coursework in a few days and I'll try to avoid tons of boring notes much as possible... hint: it won't be possible!

03The next thing we need is a cross on each cut-out area on both sides. This will be especially important later when we start turning the head. The crosses will act as a guide to creating the perspective we want regardless of the head angle.

02From the point at the brow line, we will not follow the sphere anymore. Instead, go more or less straight down. Remember, the head is rotated to the right, so going straight down only refers to our process, not the figure itself.

01Let's take a look at a profile view. This means the cut-out area appears as a perfect circle. This perfect circle happens not because it is the natural shape of the side of the head. Rather, think of it again as a guideline for viewing the features of the head-sphere from the side.

03Just connect the chin to the jaw like we did before with a small jaw line straight down from the cut-out area. This creates a rather elegant connection to the chin. And, now our profile view is done. Do not worry that it looks like a football helmet at this point. Remember we are creating a shape as part of a process to form a fully organic human head.

01Let's move on to a slightly more complicated perspective. Turn the head to the right and downwards. Our sphere always stays the same - it doesn't matter where we turn a sphere, it will always be a sphere. And, the same is true for the cut-out areas. In the end, these are only there let us know that the head is turned to the right. In order to orient the head downwards, we just need to turn this cross.

03In order to continue the center line from the brow line, just go parallel to the vertical cross line of the cut-out area. Now the center line no longer goes straight down. It is actually angled to the left a bit because we have turned the head downwards and to the right. Keep in mind that we are viewing this head shape from above the left ear.

04Pay close attention to the chin line here: it is a bit shorter on the right side than on the left because the head is turned to the right. Therefore, we end up seeing more of the chin on the left side. From this perspective, the right side of the chin is obscured by the rest of the head shape.

06Now for the view from below: the opposite happens with this eyebrow line because now much more of this plane under the eyebrows is visible. That's why we go much longer with this eyebrow valley line.

07And here again something new happens with the ear because if we follow these guidelines for the ear as we did earlier, the ear looks like an ear painted onto an earless head. This is a problem of perspective - the ear is not flat to the head. Rather it stands out a bit away from the head. That's the reason, in this perspective, the ear goes a bit over the guideline.

I begin this step by step figure drawing tutorial by blocking in the general shape of the pose using straight lines.

This is often called an envelope. When you draw the envelope, you essentially set boundaries for the drawing.

This is helpful because the blank page doesn't seem quite so vast whenyou have a defined space in which to draw.

Whenever possible, I use the head as a unit of measurement.

I say "whenever possible" because there will, of course, be exceptionswhen you cannot see the entire shape of the head, inwhich case you must find another unit of measurement.

If I establish the shape of the head early on, I will be able to use it as a reference point throughout the entire drawing.

I have measured that this pose is slightly more than five headstall, and marked these measurements on my drawing.

Since I will be using the head as a unit ofmeasurement throughout this step by step figure drawing, I want to establish its position first, and be fairly confident in its proportions.

Just as I isolated an area for the figure using the "envelope", I can draw a rectangular shape that will house the head.

The rectangle should have the same height to width ratio as the head.

Find the easiest or most obvious landmarks to help you continue your drawing.

For example, it was easiest for me to find the center line and the hairline to aid me in drawing the shape of the head.

How did I find these?

Once I decided which angles were important to establish, I compared them to the head measurements I found earlier.

For example, when looking for the line of the bottom of the arm, I found that it is just above the "three heads" mark.

The bottom of the seat is about halfway between the three-heads and four-heads marks.

I am confident that I have enough information (measurements and reference points) to begin drawing the gesture of the pose, using the head to check heights and widths whenever I feel uncertain.

I drew several studiesbefore beginning this step by step figure drawing, in order to studyelements of the pose in isolation before having to deal with thecomplexities of the figure all at once.

I drew compositional thumbnails, analyzed the rhythms of the pose, as well as the volumes and anatomy of the figure.

These studies helped me notice that this pose has a flowing figure - eight shape.

I want to retain this figure-eight gesture, as it will lead the viewer's eye through my drawing, and add a sense of movement and flow to this pose.

I continue defining the forms of the torso and relating them to the contour.

My goal is to have the contour lines begin as interior forms andeventually turn into outlines (or vice versa: if you follow a contourline, you should eventually reach an interior form).

This is beginning to happen in the top half of my drawing.

As I become more confident that the forms and proportions are correct, I begin working with overlapping lines to show which forms are in front of others.

This starts to create the illusion of three - dimensionality in my drawing.

Strange you should ask this question. For the past three weeks I have been taking a portrait drawing class. I spent most of each three-hour class starting with the head shape and then filling in the features.

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