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You’ll learn the most important foundational concepts for drawing anything and soon you’ll be drawing pictures out of your imagination or from reference.
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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.
LESSON NOTES
This is a great exercise to improve your perspective skills, especially with organic forms like human heads. You're going to figure out the orientation of the head in space by considering a simple box, then using that box as a map for a portrait. Watch this video for tips on how to do this properly.
Practice this from the photos I've provided in the downloads tab and don't forget to submit your drawing to the community!
RELATED LINKS:
One-Point Perspective
Two-Point Perspective
How to Learn Perspective - Draftsmen S1E26
DOWNLOADS
project-portraits-in-perspective.mp4
213 MB
project-portraits-in-perspective-transcript-english.txt
5 kB
project-portraits-in-perspective-transcript-spanish.txt
6 kB
project-portraits-in-perspective-captions-english.srt
8 kB
project-portraits-in-perspective-captions-spanish.srt
9 kB
ASSIGNMENTS![]()
![François Alligier]()
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![Alexandre Frazao]()
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![Ronald Moss Jr]()
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![@eduardovera2025]()
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![Rio]()
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![Wexarix_]()
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![Patrick Bosworth]()
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![Carlos Javier Roo Soto]()
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![Carlos Javier Roo Soto]()
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![Sneek]()
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![gunk]()
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![Patrick Bosworth]()
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![Luis Ángel Ruiz de Gopegui Rando]()
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![Melanie Scearce]()
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![Bag of Snakes]()
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![@toufubox]()
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![@thenotsogrim]()
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![Chuck Ludwig Reina]()
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![Rich Acosta]()
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![Caden Y]()
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![Melanie Scearce]()
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![João Rudge]()
In this project we'll practice applying perspective to organic forms. Heads, while organic, adhere to the rules of perspective similar to boxy objects, so we'll start by constructing 3D heads. Look for clues of the angle of each axis such as angles from brow to ear, the vertical center line of the face, and the horizontal side to side angles of the features.
I've prepared a range of portrait photos for you to work with, that you could find in the downloads tab under the video. You'll notice each photo is numbered. Please label your drawings with the corresponding photo you're drawing to help me and the community give you a critique. Otherwise it would be very difficult to know which box matches each photo.
Level 1: Basic Box Construction
Draw a box representing a simplified version of each head.
- Try to match the orientation and dimensions of the head in the photo
- Rely on your intuition to imagine each head's rotation and dimensions
- Iterative process: Redo and refine as needed
Level 2: Head Construction
Start with a small box representation of the head, same as Level 1. Then add linear head construction with accurate perspective.
- Use primarily straight lines to draw, emphasizing plane changes
- Find angles in the organic shape that correlate with the simple box (ex: top and back of the head)
- Observe, analyze, then draw
- Avoid drawing tiny heads; aim for at least 4 inches in height
Deadline: Submit by 1/15/2024 for a chance to be in the critique video!
Still struggling to see the box around the head and get the proportions right, but identifying those main planes really help keeping the features angles consistent once you have them !
Both portraits are result of researches with box, small scale sketches then about 30min each :)
As far as drawing in perspective; I do believe I have the boxes a little better. But when it comes to drawing portraits, I do believe I still need a little work trying to break them down. So please feel free to criticize, but keep it positive. Thank you.
I did some screwing around, had a lot of fun with this method, if combined with the proportions classes it definitely improves a lot the portrait construction 😤
Not great but will be doing more. I really struggle drawing straight lines does anyone know any additional excersizes I can do to work on free handing my straight lines more accurately?
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20d
These are really well done! You kept to straight lines, and found really great organic boxy shapes for the planes of the head and features. They all have a really solid 3D feel to them, and you captured a bit of likeness with each! In #8 be careful of your features falling out of perspective. The mouth and chin have some arbitrary convergence so it looks a little off towards the bottom of the face. A really helpful trick to catch this early on is to flip the photo horizontally to look at it in reverse, or hold your sketchbook up in a mirror so you can see the image flipped. It instantly will help you see where you're off. It's like a magic trick. Hope this helps, keep up the good work!
This time they turn up better than my first try. But for the portraits the proportions are still off and the perspective weaker than the lv 1. I think I didn't visualize the box as I should had with the level 2. Also I don't know why, I can't never do folds right like you see in the neck.
What can you see that id failing here?
I guess this is what happens when you don't practice everyday or you practice other stuff that aren't boxes. I don't know if it is because of the heads I choose to do but I was having a really hard time deciding which line set should stay parallel while the other two converge. I really need to go back to do portraits because, what the hell are these faces on the level 2.
Also my hand is more shaking when I do these than with the warm-ups, I hope is just anxiety and not my carpal tunnel getting worse.
Any advice?
I feel like i have the right idea, like I know the vertical lines need to be parallel and they need to be perpendicular to the horizon line. I'm having trouble finding where to to put the lines and what angle they need to be. Perhaps I'm getting distracted by the hair, jaw, and neck? I'm also not sure how how parallel the lines need to look if the vanishing point is super far away. I know they're not supposed to be parallel but look close? Boxes are hard lol.
I was extremely stuck on two-point perspective boxes, so I stopped working on this course to follow Drawabox for a bit, until I got more comfortable with drawing boxes. Resuming this part of the course after I have.
Here are a few heads in both L1 and L2 before watching the demos.
Finding the correct angles for each side of the boxes was confusing at first, but I've found that the easiest methods for me of finding them were:
- browline/cheekbones -> X axis (width)
- the vertical centerline of the face -> Y axis (height)
- browline to ear -> Z axis (depth)
though the models' proportions were all a little bit different, so those factors served as guidelines rather than concrete measurements.
It was also difficult to eyeball the proportions of the head box from just the photos, so the proportions/likeness were all over the place in my drawings.
Will watch the demos and follow along to see how Stan approaches them.
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1mo
Really nice job with these! Your boxes are solidly constructed, and your convergence is looking pretty good (#3 is a little off but the rest are working!) The portraits are also well constructed, lined up in perspective and you captured a good deal of the likeness for each! For #6 it looks like you might be seeing the raised eyebrow cause an upward tilt to this portrait, but its more of a down tilt because we don't see the bottom plane of the chin/jaw, and more of the top of the skull. The eyebrow is raised above the browline and is closer to camera so it appears to have a slight up tilt when you measure back to the ear, but if you follow the nose line back on the side of the head it should line up around where the bottom of the ear lobe attaches to the side plane of the head. You'll see more of this explained in the demos and critique episodes. Hope this helps, keep up the good work!
Hi everyone, here are my drawings. I think some of them look a little squashed (I didn't measure them properly). Any feedback is welcome, please! I need to improve... thanks!
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1mo
Excellent work, Luis! Overall you did great. There are some really good likenesses in there. The one I would point out for critique is #5. I think your level 1 thumbnail is more accurate than your level 2 drawing, which is a bit too wide proportionally. Another thing to note is that the proportions of the face, ie rule of thirds, will be distorted due to the angle of the front plane of the box. Those landmarks will compress towards the bottom of the plane, making his forehead appear larger than the space between his eyebrows and chin.
Absolutely loved this assignment!
It was definitely a challenge at the start, but that just affirmed that I was pushing into a growth skill. I've always wanted to be able to draw heads at complex angles and never had the toolkit to do so. This is exactly the type of technical skill I'd hoped to learn in this course. The simple act of identifying parallel elements of the face, makes the geometry so much more accessible.
Definitely still room for improvement, particularly with my proportions and line work, but I feel like this exercise has laid the foundation to just keep doing these and improve with repetition.
I had initial trouble trying to figure out how to fit a box over a head and I'm sure that I've definitely messed up my proportions for more than a few of my boxes. I was mostly trying to be aware of the position of the horizon line and where the vanishing would roughly be though I had a lot of trouble doing the latter especially at the beginning.
I couldn't open the ZIP file of the references because it said "AccessDenied", so I just tried to get some of the pictures from the video instead, before I look at the demo.
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2mo
Hey there! First off nice work. I was also getting that access denied issue, and it was because I was using a VPN. Maybe that is your issue too?
This was a lot of fun. I got the hang of these by the end. At first I was way too preoccupied with looking at all the different angles on the head. It helped a ton when:
1) I started thinking of these in 2 point perspective instead of 3
2) I just focused on where the horizon line was, then approximated my vanishing points.
I don't think my proportions were always right, but I feel decent about my angles. I know if one side is super foreshortened, the other side will have a very far vanishing point etc.
I put on some silly faces just to give some kind of indication of where these boxes are facing.
I would appreciate a really nitpicky critique for the proportions/angles, I especially have a harder time with up angles cause the downwards chin throws me off a lot, but any critique is welcome :)
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2mo
These look great overall. #3 and #5 are the ones that stand out to me; I think #3 should have a bit more of that side plane showing, and #5 more top plane showing. Nice work Caden!
