Reilly Method Head Drawing: Unit 1 – Anatomy

[New Masters Academy]

As the protegé to the famous Fred Fixler, who worked directly under the legendary Frank Reilly, Mark has an unrivaled knowledge of the Reilly Method for drawing the head. In the 1980’s, his artistic prominence gave way to an illustrious career in Hollywood movie poster design. He later founded Associate’s in Art in Southern California, a top school for illustrators, from which many alumni became the “who’s who” in the fields of figurative art.

In this series, Mark introduces you to the Reilly Method, a way of understanding the structure of the head through the use of rhythms, to help project accurate proportions of your subject from any angle.

In this first lesson, Marks precise knowledge and nomenclature of the elements that make up the head will give you a foundational understanding of its anatomy, preparing you to learn the Reilly Method later in this series.

[Lain]

Without meaning any disrespect, regarding “Mark’s precise knowledge and nomenclature of the elements that make up the head”, there are many misleading things about this particular lesson. For example:

•The mastoid process is said to be part of the occipital bone, it is not, it is part of the temporal bone.

•The furrows at the glabella of the model are said to be caused by the frontalis muscle, they are not, they are the effect of the corrugator muscles

•Parts of the maxilla are constantly referred to as the “nasal bone” or the “zygomatic process”

•Several muscles, such as depressor anguli oris, depressor labii inferioris are refered to by their alternative and (very) old names, which have been far gone from anatomy books for decades

•Some volumes have their cause attributed to one muscle or another, when in reality most of the volume in question comes from subcutaneous and structural fat.

Among several other mistakes.

It is not my intention to appear overly nitpicky about lessons that have clearly had a lot of effort poured into them, and I realize this is not meant to be a complete lecture on facial anatomy, but these are things that if taken at face value by someone that has never studied anatomy, can derail future studies into the subject.

[AdelAlmohasen]

Just to make a short comment, the photo that is used is very small to follow.

[Thomas]

How are we supposed to memorise anything from this ?

[erased_1665629636]

Is there a skull reference photo to download for lesson 1?

[Daniel Daigle]

Hi Allison, The skeleton that mark used as reference is in the reference tab under the video B)
you can also check out the skull albums under the anatomy category

https://www.nma.art/images/search/types/anatomy/#page-1

And the 3D skulls, also in the anatomy category

https://www.nma.art/3dmodels/search/3d_models/anatomical/#page-1

[erased_1665629636]

Hi,

 

Its Unit 1, lesson 2. The image Mark used is not in the references, I tried looking for it in other course references, I dont know what unit B is and the 3D model doesn’t work for some reason, but never mind, it is an excellent course and I am really grateful Mark left this for others. I will print out the video screen to use the same model. Then practice with the other NMA  models – there seems to be an abundance of them. Thanks , I’m really enjoying these courses, so many to choose from !

[Daniel Daigle]

Hi Allison, its the downloadable file underneath the reference images 🙂

[erased_1665629636]

Found it! In the website footer. Thank you for your assistance.

[JamieBowman]

 

 

• This reply was modified 3 years, 8 months ago by JamieBowman.

[Penny ONeil]

After drawing the frontal view, I realized that my drawing was too long for the width.  Is there a general ratio for width vs length of a face/skull – realizing of course variations?

Thanks!

[Penny ONeil]

Found it in following lessons.  Thanks

[Author]

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