Head Drawing 1 | Part 1: Proportions and Structure

[New Masters Academy]

In this series, instructor Charles Hu teaches you his approach to beginning head drawing. This six-part series will cover: Proportions, the Structure of the Skull, Laws of Light, Achieving Likeness, Facial Features, and Facial Expressions. In this first lesson, you will learn Charles’ methods for finding the correct proportions of the head and features of the face. Charles will do several demonstrations, both from imagination and photo reference, and will conclude the lesson by giving you an assignment to help you practice what you’ve learned.

Materials

• Conté a Paris Crayons – Black, White, Bistre, Sanguine
• Faber-Castell Ambition Fountain Pen – Medium

[JackMcShea]

In Part 1, Chapter 4, Charles mentions the use of a Cottonwood Arts drawing notebook that has interleaved multimedia and vellum sheets.

Can anyone clarify its use? I assume you make the drawing on the multimedia sheet and then sketch the planes of the head on the overlaid vellum sheet.

Is that it?

-Thanks

[ANA LIA PELCAST]

I’ve found this lesson extremely confusing, couldn’t follow anything he was doing because the explanations aren’t clear and when he was talking about something was already drawing something else.

On minute 42.20 he stood in front of the drawing won’t letting see a thing, and kept doing it for the whole video, very frustrating.

 

[Joshua Jacobo]

To clarify the comments about not understanding Charles, I believe there should be captions on this lesson now but I will check. If there’s not we will fix, immediately. My apologies.

I believe Charles was saying that students will draw on drawing paper and he would critique their work on vellum tracing paper sheets.

Ana, is it the explanations that are confusing or is it Charles’ accent that is difficult to understand. I’m considering doing a re-edit on this to improve it and your feedback would help.

 

 

[Karen Shaw]

How about a different camera angle on this? I found that he was standing in front of the drawing for a good portion of the video and I couldn’t see what he was doing.

[Brittney Bach]

So we draw the head then draw the planes on tracing paper?

[Daniel Daigle]

Hi Brittney, I think the ultimate goal for the assignment is to be able to construct the head from planes without draw overs. But you can definitely do draw overs to learn how the planes work. If you are having any difficulty, you could print out the reference photo and then draw the planes directly on the reference photo. Then as the next step, draw the head, and then draw the planes on top of that head drawing with or without tracing paper. Then finally construct the head from planes alone, with no under drawing.
Good Luck!

[Chadwick Renfro]

Man Charles Hu is great. I have always come to figurative drawing from a more mechanical angle and Charles did a great job on helping me see this from this side. I guess it’s the engineer in me but for whatever reason I really connected with his approach. The detail on the placement of the eyes was terrific.

[Author]

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