Michael Hampton
Los Osos
Educator, painter, writer, and art historian. Author of Figure Drawing: Design and Invention.
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Carlos
added comment inPlanes and Forms of the Head
18d
Is there a way of getting the horizontal proportions? Same way you have explained the halves and thirds, but for the width of the face so we don't end up with faces that are, in my case, too narrow.
I have thought about this because I don't know where would be a correct position to draw the temple in my sketches to form the temporal fossa.
Thank you.
3h
I don't use anything like this or else I'd happily include it/provide you with a more concrete answer in the videos. You could try experimenting with 5 eyes across. That would work well in a symmetrical view.
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5h
How do you find the back of the skull if you're not starting with an accurate skull shape? When you start with this big perfect circle its not gonna accurately reflect where any of this is. I don't know where the circle shape on the inside in this diagram even came from.
3h
I look for the width of the occipital ridge. This would be about one ear width behind the ear. I tend to just sight it but you could also use the trapezius to help find you're way there.
As this is a construction, I'm mostly dealing in abstraction and estimation. If the basic sphere confuses you and you're looking for something more accurate to the skull try beginning with the form of the cranial mass
hello, choosing the right directions for wrapping lines trip me up a bit and proportions and perspective but I’m learning
4d
Nice! We're all learning. That's the fun part of doing it for me
Michael Hampton
4d
Michael Hampton
4d
5d
Asked for help
Love this assignment. Feel like I'm grasping the first 4 steps a little better, but here come more steps!
I kept checking my proportions with overlays, and it seems I like to shrink the forehead and make the bottom third of the face too large. Will need to continue to work against that.
Excited to see further refinement on this process in the future!
5d
Nice job!
6d
After initial research on golden ratio in art, I can sort of get the concept of it but I'm a little lost in application when it comes to mapping out said composition according to the golden ratio you mention. Is there a @Michael Hampton preferred method of applying the golden ratio in your drawings?
I ask because your method of head construction proportions is VERY easy to apply without thinking too much about the math (relative halves and thirds). Maybe a future proko video / lesson?
5d
The method here is really just a shorthand to find asymmetry. I'm not trying to faithfully recreate the golden ratio. This is a close as I get to short handing it.
7d
Asked for help
This seems like a healthy project for me, considering how much I struggled with it.
Big thing I think that help me up was line quality and being indecisive on what the bounds of the face/jaw plane should be.
I couldn't tell what looked right/ was right for making the face plane. Should it be the width of the jaw, extending from where it meets the sphere of the cranium? Or should it be narrow and as tight to the actual plane of the face?
Excited to keep working on this course!
7d
The jaw/head shape and size is confusing for sure. I address it further in each critique video posted so far if you want to check those out.
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Very information dense lessons makes my head hurt after each video!
I am curious if you use this process for live quick figure drawing.
Would you still try to go through step by step for say a 2 min pose? Would you limit or expand the number of steps you try to achieve based on the length of a pose? I guess this assuming you do quick poses at all.
7d
I do use this as a framework for life drawing, definitely. And sure, I'll sometimes collapse, edit, or tweak steps. After a while though, once you internalize the lesson of each step, you can really just collapse it down into a direct line.
