Two Studies

If I’d wanted to, I could have made an academically correct drawing with the proportions of the figure corresponding to what I actually saw. But I chose not to. More often than not, I choose to distort a little, trading anatomical correctness for statuesque drama. In this pose, about twelve minutes, I dramatized the figure to make it look as if seen from below, like a statue on a pedestal. The feet are big and the head is small. In other words, I foreshortened the figure. Why? It’s fun to see if you can achieve a certain effect by breaking the academic rules.
Then, during a seated pose, I got fascinated by the hands and the neck. I zoomed in for anatomical correctness. I repented, ha.
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Life Drawing: Neck Meets Jaw

The discussion in the previous post (2.8.11) finds ample illustrations in “real life.”

Here are some of my own life drawings that show the model displaying the neck-meets-jaw angle. Notice that this requires a foreshortening of the face, with the chin being prominent; the nose seen as a triangle (from underneath); the bridge of the nose very short;  the eye, a mere arc; and the forehead losing all of its real height, because it is the farthest section away from the eye of the artist;  oh, and the hair on the top of the head barely makes an appearance.

Pulling this off takes practice, both in seeing and in drawing.   Errmm–has anybody noticed!– that’s the theme running through these posts on technique.  Practice!

(The drawing at the top consists of five  three-minute drawings.  The standing pose, above, is a ten-minute drawing.  The seated pose, left, is a fifteen-minute pose.)

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Neck Meets Jaw

We like drawing the face looking straight at us.  It’s easy that way because all the features are aligned symmetrically so that as we draw, we can orient ourselves without getting lost.  But a full frontal view is limited in its expressive possibilities.  We all know from our everyday interactions with people that people tilt their heads as they speak and look at things and that a little tilt conveys attitude and emotional meaning.  Those of us who are privileged enough to participate in life drawing know something else:  the model stands on an elevation and as we draw her/him we look up at the face, seeing the jaw from underneath.  When the model reclines or twists, we also see the face and neck from this foreshortened angle. That angle is quite beautiful, if I may use that old-fashioned word, but also quite challenging, because it presents us with both subtlety and at the same time a definite anatomical geometry.  To avoid the issue, students tend to just ignore what’s in front of their eyes and instead draw a full frontal , standard-issue face.  That makes for a sad drawing.

It was time to face the underside of the face, where the neck meets the jaw.  My presentation  started with a face on a lampshade.  As we tilt the lampshade back, we see the underside of the nose, which becomes triangular, and the underside of the lampshade, which becomes an ellipse.  The stem of the lampshade is now roughly in the middle of the ellipse.  We rotate the face to the left and move the stem to the right, and, voila, the analogy to head-with-neck becomes obvious.  An aha! -moment for all students.  The demo was clear, but it turned out to be a little harder to put into practice. But by now we know, don’t we, that practice is the thing!  The muscle that wraps around the neck-tube, extending from the back of the ear to the sternum in front, is called the sternocleidomastoid. A fun word to stay, but a bear to draw.  So—surprise, ha—the neck is not exactly the simple stem of a lampshade, but seeing the analogy does help you visualize what’s going on.

Practice!

All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.

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http://katherinehilden.wordpress.com

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