Help needed for eyebrow placement
3yr
Anne-Lise Loubière
Hi guys.
I hope it's ok to post here.
I've been working hard on heads lately and I've taken a side trip to the Watts academy of Arts atelier classes on portraits.
I'm mostly struggling with the placement of the eyebrows in the relation to the bone structure of the skull.
On the drawings provided by teachers, the brow line seems to point downward, but on many references, it's pointing upward (I hope it makes sense, see pic below).
I'm practicing tracing the planes of the head on photos and 3D models to get a better understanding of 3D and space, but I have a really hard time adapting the planes of the brow area, I'm never satisfied with them. I'm afraid I'm doing it wrong.
I hope someone could help me ^^O
I've joined pictures without annotations as exemples, and if anyone wants to trace over them.
Thanks a lot!
3yr
@Anne-Lise Loubière Glad you've figured it out on your own! I'm sorry I didn't get to your post sooner. You seem to be doing some really cool studies! As @Teresa Bolen said well, the external aspect of the eyebrows can vary greatly between individuals (just as most superficial traits, that's why people usually rely much more on bones when dealing with proportions). But your question was fair and legitimate, I can really see how this could have become confusing to you.
Not sure if you've seen Proko's Portrait course already, but although it's a bit short compared to the others, it's quite dense and packed with helpful information too.
By the way, @Teresa Bolen, I think that's an interesting topic for us, too, I guess this kind of information can be pretty useful for character designers. I heard once that, biologically, the eyebrows are meant to protect our eyes from sweat, rainwater and other stuff... but you brought up something more, it could be really interesting to learn a bit more about how eyebrow shapes and stylings are perceived and used in different cultures.
Anne-Lise Loubière
3yr
Thank you for your answer! Sorry I didn't see your post sooner, the notifs didn't show up for some reason.
I've taken Proko's portrait courses already (first one I bought in fact!). They're really great, but I think a deeper knowledge of the structure of the skull and face wouldn't hurt me since I wish to work on character designs ^^ (and indeed, brow shapes are very important!)
3yr
I hadn't thought about it in terms of character design, since that's not my area - but now that you've said it @Liandro Roger it's so obvious how much eyebrows convey! and the cultural associations. Thinking now of even the Stephen Colbert emoji 🤨 - (I don't know if it was really designed after him, or if he just said that on his show for fun before it was revealed.) Age, also, shows in the eyebrows. Men in Japan (and maybe everywhere) who don't get them styled end up with these crazy long wild eyebrows. I'm going to be thinking about this a lot more in my composition...
Anyway, Liandro and @Anne-Lise Loubière , have a wonderful holiday, and wishing you both all the best in the New Year.
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Ha, I've figured it out (after weeks...). I thought the "hairy" brow line should follow the "bone" brow line... Erf, I feel stupid now
3yr
Thanks for your post! It's quite inspiring, because I didn't know that I didn't know about this :)
Now the bumps in portrait photos make more sense to me.
Here's a relevant page from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brow_ridge
3yr
Don’t feel stupid! It’s an interesting topic. Sorry to see this so late- I’ve been locked out of the site (password memory lapses), and I’ve been circling around the topic of eyebrows vs. supraorbital ridge, too! In Japan, you can get your eyebrows styled, have them trimmed, shaved, and drawn in to an astonishing variety of locations! It’s been on my mind so much I’ve been considering reaching out to an anthropologist colleague who specializes in morphology to see if she could explain the purpose/function of eyebrows to me - but would be a much better conversation over lunch than in email...
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