Project - Measure Proportions

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Project - Measure Proportions

7.2K
Course In Progress

Deadline: Submit your assignment by 07/25/2023 for a chance to be featured in the next critique video!

Use the reference photo and all the measuring methods you learned in the previous lesson to practice drawing a portrait with accurate proportion.

Keep in mind that your layin will get harder as you move from big shapes to smaller details. Don't draw too small, otherwise the shapes of the features will be too small and harder to draw accurate. Keep the photo next to or in front of your paper to avoid distortion.

Expect a careful layin to take about an hour. Don't rush. Worry about accuracy, not time.

Remember - big to small, use straight lines, measure units, double check, find plumb lines, judge angles. Try to have fun!

Level 2, you're doing the same thing for this one. This exercise doesn't change no matter what your experience level is.

The Musketeer photo reference is from the Musketeer Model Pack by Grafit Studio

Newest
Lost 247365
I kinda misunderstood that we were supposed to be simplifying and went all out on the details. So I redid the simplified version. That said, I wanted to include my high detailed drawing as well so I am including it at the end.
Daniel Rodriguez
@Martha Muniz Any and all constructive criticism would be appreciated. I followed both lessons as close as possible.
Rachel Dawn Owens
Nice work! The proportions look close to the reference. I like how dimensional the eyes look. I think one think that could help you out is to use more tapered marks. Practicing ‘drawing through’ will help you out a lot along your artist journey. Good stuff. Keep it up!
Michael Koch
@goobish
12d
My submission for the Proportions project. It took me many tries to get this result though I know this is still probably not perfectly accurate. When practicing proportions is it better to do many quicker measuring + eye balling portraits for quick feed back on a range of faces with varying proportions or would it be better to focus on a single portrait at a time and do the photoshop self critique many times as you go and slowly try and chisel away at the face to train your eyes that way? Thanks very much any advise or critiques would be greatly appreciated.
@arthiecio
21d
Tried to understand more about how to quickly put some placeholders but take me 3 hours to end the measures.
Melanie Scearce
Don't worry too much about how long it takes you -- speed with come with practice. You did a nice job filling in the details and it looks like you followed the simple to complex process. Really focus on the angles of the landmarks like the angle between the eyes, and the angle between the eye and the top of the ear. Finding those angles will be very useful to you in determining the placement of the nose, mouth, and overall angle of the face. Overlaying your drawing over the reference image shows that the angle between the eyes is a bit off, which give the effect of the face tilting in the opposite direction. Hope that helps :)
@dangerousnor
Made some erorross. Also need to focus and be more conscious about my angles.
Greg Low
24d
First go (and this is my first time submitting homework - yay!). Not sure I did a goo enough job of simplifying the shapes. They are quite complicated! And this likely made it harder to get it accurate. Also this took me significantly longer than an hour... phew! I’d like to have another go at simplifying further once I've reviewed the demo + critiques.
Michael Longhurst
Second attempt . This was after some back and forth checking and correcting. I was pretty good on the head and face, but the shoulders were way off so I corrected. Need to be more careful with the “less important” proportions!
ANX804U
24d
Nice work, though I will suggest using a better reference where light and dark has much more contrast, so you can actually see shapes and that help you if you draw that pose again or from imagination. Though really great work, the angles are perfect you are just missing some shapes in between shapes, but that's not a problem from measurements, it's just anatomy problem. Master piece michael
Michael Longhurst
First attempt. The facial features were proportionate to each other, but too low on the face. Hat was too big, which may have been a part of my struggle.
ANX804U
28d
I don't know if it's any better, I would totally love a critique. my doubt after doing it second time is : I spend 50 percent of time in eyes, why even in second time I could not tilt it more, how can I make it more clean like its in video. Thanks a lot again. sayonara until next time but todays I am gonna do at least 3 projects.
Josh Fiddler
100% you're main issue is line quality. Confidence primarily, but also going dark makes moving and fixing mistakes very challenging, leaving behind a lot of muddying smudges. try to pull a line like the left edge of the hat in one stroke, the next line toward the peak. of the hat again in one stroke. maybe you over shoot, maybe you undershoot, meh. The goal is angle and direction. For the long edge of the face, a couple pulls should do it. Agonizing over getting it exactly right may also be a source of troubles.
Dipede Doodle
This is my attemp it took 3 hours. I am pretty happy with it.Obviously my main goal was to hit the spot and keeping the proportions right. Please let me know what I can improve, leave a critique or hit the like button. Thank you!
Dipede Doodle
Did you ever seen someone portraiing while using a transparent ruler? I didn't and I didn't use it for this drawing but I am just wondering. I mean you can use it but still have to keep a proportional relation (like the head) but it seems to be easier with a transparent ruler. For those who have a hard time meassuring with the pencil as I do. I use a hard strip of paper for meassurement this gives me a wider edge on top so I dont have to be that pointy. It helps me keeping on track.
@jflores
1mo
Here is my assigment. This was a difficult one for me.
ANX804U
1mo
let me try one more time 😤, without tonal values 😭
ANX804U
1mo
its freaking bad, i need my tonal values lessons right now, it was looking acceptable until i started putting those tonal values 😭
@luiscubal
1mo
My attempt to draw the portrait. In general, I think it came out decent, though some measurements about the size of the body turned out to be off. In the face, the eyes turned out a bit too close and the ears a bit too big. The arm shaking a bit while trying to measure stuff with my pencil also made some measurements less reliable than I'd like.
Chauncey Holder
I made him to square this measurement thing is still need to me. If anyone has any additional help on measure accurately and have them look like the person it'll be very helpful cause I struggle a lot
Dipede Doodle
Hey there! I like how dedicated you are. I have watched the 3 attempts you have made - well done! I am not a pro, but I have done this exercise and I would like to show how I approached it and what I think is important. The most important thing is to meassure correctly. It is necessary to follow the instructions in the video. Straight arms (shoulder arm 90 degres), close one eye, lean your head to the side. I think you used the pencil for measurement like in the video described. Personaly I am having a hard time keeping the orientation when using the pencil. This is why I use something wider like a lighter or a piece of paper. Paper also has the benefit that I can fold it which allows me to find the center of the measurement which is also very helpful (but don't fold the meassure device use a seprate sheet of paper). Use a thick paper. And don't forget to use your measure device to find angles. The next step is where you need to spend a lot of patience. It is the part where you try to find a relation between important landmarks. This is different from drawing to drawing and needs to be tried out - and wow is the relation that Stan found convenient. He used the size of the hat. Your goal is to find a height that relates to all other landmarks that help you out like the mouth char... From there you start to measure a grid in your head and keep all the important landmarks in mind. So you use the same width as height in order to create a square. Attached you will find an example of how this grid may look like. The important thing is to remember where the landmarks are going to land. In this example you will notice that the nose and the chin land on each relation so you can draw the head. Than I continued with the shoulders. Left shoulder - 3 meassurements down begin of the shoulder. Then across one meassurement. And this is how I try keep orientation. Finally you will need to understand that this grit never will cover the whole drawing so you will also need to guess how far the space between the grid and the final piece is (where I wrote eyeball in the attached image). Hope I gave you something that helps. Keep on going!
I did not Want to see that
This was very hard, I usually just eyeball everything and don't really relate one thing to another, so doing actual measurements was challenging. In short I did not know what I was doing when I was doing the layin, I tried to relate one thing to another, I tried to find plumb lines and judge angles and to keep on checking, but it felt like I did not know what I was doing and still feel that right now, however what I will say, when I was drawing it definitely felt a little easier to get the proportions right on a couple of places where I put those measuring lines, instead of me usually going with my guts, I learned something from it, but I still don't fully understand it. Regardless of all of that, this was before the demo. If there are any points of criticism, pointing those out is something I really, really appreciate! We can only improve when we know what is wrong, so if there is someone that will reply, I do not mind how hard the criticism is! But replying is of course not mandatory! I did try to make the drawing pretty simplistic.
Minna Mäkinen
This was definitely tricky. The reference photo is not the easiest one out there. Strangely enough, I found it easier to start from the bottom and block in the shoulders first so I could figure out the size of the head better. This also took me way more than an hour. I think it took around 3, maybe longer :´) PS: I hate noses.
Vili
1mo
After some tries, i think proportions are not good at all and my lines feel too dirty
Melanie Scearce
Your proportions on the musketeer are mostly accurate! Try not to be too hard on yourself. The woman's pose is quite difficult, so kudos for giving it a try. You did the heavy lifting already by checking your work and you know where your measuring is off -- if you give it a second try, I think you'll see a lot of improvement! This is a skill that requires frequent repeated work to improve on. To improve the appearance of your lines, I recommend slowing way down and putting conscious attention on making long, light and loose lines. Don't get too heavy with the weight of the line until you're ready to commit it to the page. Even if it takes twice as long, it's worth it to practice good lines. You will get faster with practice :)
Tori Blade
1mo
I am really conflicted and cant figure out what I am doing wrong. Any advice helps I would love to improve this but I am not sure how
Melanie Scearce
Overall you did a great job! This is a very difficult assignment, so please don't get discouraged. It will take a lot of reps to fine-tune your sight drawing skills. Finding relational angles between landmarks of the body is a great skill to practice. I noticed a few areas where the correct angles would make your drawing more proportional. The first area (red) is the angle between the eyes -- I used the eyelids as reference. The second area (blue) is the angle between his left eye and the top of the ear. You can use any pair of points that makes sense to you as reference and as long as it's translated correctly in your drawing, you will have the correct proportions. The last point is an anatomy correction. The neck in your drawing connects to the junction between the jaw and the ear lobe. The sternocleidomastoid is the muscle that makes this shape and runs from the clavicle to the skull behind the ear. It's responsible for turning the head and nodding. Because we know that the scm connects behind the ear, we know that the mass of the neck will be visible behind the ear, as shown in my draw over. Hope this helps :)
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Founder of Proko, artist and teacher of drawing, painting, and anatomy. I try to make my lessons fun and ultra packed with information.
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