Reilly Method Head Drawing: Unit 6 – Rendering Approaches

[New Masters Academy]

Now that you’ve internalized the fundamental techniques and concepts related to Frank Reilley’s rhythmic abstraction of the head, Mark encourages you to tackle more nuanced angles, poses, and expressions of the portrait in the final lesson in his series. He demonstrates various approaches using toned paper and colored pencils, as well as a technique for creating rich blended tones using a combination of wax pencil and mineral spirits on a printed vellum copy.

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.

As the protegé to the famous Fred Fixler, who worked directly under the legendary Frank Reilly, Mark’s unrivaled knowledge of the Reilly Method for drawing the head led 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. He will be greatly missed, and his imprint on the industry, students across the world, and here at the NMA studio will last forever.

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