Constructive drawing of a human head:
Constructive construction of the human head

Table of contents

Constructive construction of the human head

The layout of the sheet space is resolved. The proportional relationships between the height and width of the selected mass of the human head are found.

Draw the midline of the person’s head according to your chosen position of nature. It will be a line vertical or almost vertical, depending on the tilt of the head. It must be carried out filled, feeling the surface of the ellipse under it. The midline passes through the nose bridge, the base of the nose, the middle section of the mouth and the chin. Other auxiliary lines cross it at right angles, which pass through the orbital cavities, forming an axial eye, through the zygomatic bones, frontal bone, and chin.

The axial eye divides the height of the head into almost equal parts (the front part and the skull). The center line of the cheekbones divides into equal parts the height from the chin to the upper center line of the forehead. The auxiliary lines must be marked out taking into account the proportional relationship of the parts of the face to the whole, as well as the nature of nature.

All horizontal auxiliary lines must be drawn taking into account the selected position and perspective. If you continue the horizontal auxiliary lines, they will converge at one point on the horizon line. It is at the level of your eyes, and the position of nature in relation to you is chosen. Now determine the position of nature relative to the horizon: above the line, at the level of the line, below the line.

Draw auxiliary center lines: the head is straight, without tilt. But even if the head of the model being drawn tilts forward or backward, the horizontal axis lines will still be parallel and converge to a point on the horizon line. With the exception of the model, with the head tilted to the right or left: it needs to pick up the vanishing point of the horizontal center lines.

The drawing begins with a constructive construction of the frontal surfaces of the head. They correspond to the frontal surface of the cube (if the model of the human head is abstracted to the model of the cube) and the rectangular frontal surface of the podium, on which the gypsum model of the human head is usually located.

Draw the front surface of the frontal bone of the human head (as you painted it at the skull) according to the centerline. The width of the forehead surface is approximately equal to the distance between the centers of the orbits.

Next, determine the depth of the centerline of the eyes by looking at the head in profile and realizing how far the surface of the forehead is advanced in relation to this centerline. On this line, find the point of the midline; connect with the median line passing through the surface of the forehead. Then find the extreme points of the eye sockets on the centerline of the eyes and connect them to the surface of the forehead. Thus, we got a “visor” that will hang over the frontal surface of the front of the head.

Determine the depth of the centerline of the cheekbones relative to the frontal surface of the forehead. Find the anchor points on the centerline of the cheekbones. The zygomatic line corresponds to the widest place on the front of the human head. If you draw your head in three quarters, then one point will coincide with the contour line in its protruding place. The other point will be on the boundary of the rotation of the front part in space, between the frontal and lateral position of the sides.

Well, if at this time you can imagine the construction of the skull. Connect the anchor points of the cheekbones with the external points of the eye sockets on the centerline of the eyes - get a platform that moves forward. Continue the median line to the intersection with the cheekbone line, and then draw it vertically down. Look again at the contour line of the front part: it goes down, with an inclination to the axial. Draw two lines from the supporting zygomatic points downward, narrowing, to the intersection with the lower part of the jaw. This will help us build the front vertical surface of the front of the head.

Build the front area of the chin in the midline. The chin area will be “extended” forward from the front surface of the front of the head.

Go to the constructive construction of the side of the face mask. Imagine the side surface of a cube and a skull of a human head. Find the magnitude of the zygomatic arch from the reference point to the ear. Draw a center line in the depth of the sheet, taking into account the perspective. From the top of the forehead to the intersection with the axis of the cheekbone, draw a line to the ear, then down to build the distal, lower, and anterior parts of the mandibular bone. Thus, you will construct the constructive basis of the mask of a person’s head.

From the front surface of the frontal bone, we continue the constructive construction of the cranium according to the view. This is where your simple understanding of the shape of the skull, which you learned in the previous task, will be especially required.

Pay attention to the shape of the head hairstyle. She repeats the shape of the skull, all its platforms; you just need to add the thickness of the hairstyle. No matter how wavy the hair, no matter how large the curls are, they (in a generalized form) represent the shape of a skull.

The neck is the shape of a cylinder having a forward inclination. It depends on the position of the cervical spine, which connects to the base of the skull. The neck ends with a beveled section (with an axial line from the jugular fossa to the seventh cervical vertebra), which is located on the rhomboid section of the shoulder girdle. Do not get carried away in further revealing sternocleidomastoid muscles at the neck - this will lead to the destruction of the integrity of the form.

So, we have completed work on the constructive basis of the entire human head. In other words, the foundation was erected under the future drawing, and the stronger it is, the more successful the subsequent work will go (ill. 72.73).

From the midline of the front surface of the frontal bone, draw the median center line of the nose. Find the length of the nose, build its front platform, corresponding to the position in space of the front surfaces of the front part. Determine the depth of the nose, the base of which will be the front of the head. So it turned out the nose block.

Do not try to detail the nose at this point in the drawing. This can be done later, making sure that the nose block is perpendicular to the front surface, corresponds to the median axial line of the person’s head, and has the correct inclination of the face area. Otherwise, having not been convinced of this and having lost the whole vision of the nose block, you will make your detailed study in vain. It is easier to correct a mistake in the drawing of one generalized block of the nose than in the drawing of the nose, which consists of many articulating characteristic volumes (ill. 79.80).

This applies to the drawing of all parts of the human head. If you find the error in the drawing too late, you still need to fix it. You cannot compromise with yourself, because in the next figure this error will be repeated.

Then proceed to the drawing of the eyes. The eye is a ball inserted into the orbit of the skull. Look at the figure: how is the place for the eye plastically organized on three surfaces (the lateral surface of the nose, the visor of the overhanging forehead and the inclined area of the front of the head)? Find the place and width of the eye on the auxiliary center line. Draw a part of the ball protruding from the orbit, paying attention to the arched lines formed from the intersection of the hinged surface of the forehead with the ball and the front part. The ball separated the upper and lower eyelids from these surfaces.

Here I want to draw your attention to the fact that the head of a person, like his whole figure, is symmetrical when viewed from the front. And we will mention the median centerline more than once.

Draw in pairs, at the expense of one or two. Do not draw one eye, but draw both at once; outline the anchor point on the zygomatic bone - outline the pair. They will be connected by a transverse axial line running parallel to the front surfaces of the head to a point on the horizon line, and there may be plenty of such lines in the figure on the front of the head.

Build a block of shape that includes the nasolabial, upper and lower lip, and chin. The median centerline runs along the front of this block, from the nose to the bottom of the chin. The width of the platform increases to the chin and corresponds to the width of the front areas of the parts of the form. The block adjoins the front of the head, the nose rests on it.

After constructive detailing, put the order in the linear drawing. As in the drawing of the skull of a human head, remove unnecessary lines, leaving only the lines associated with the design of the form. Prepare lines for aesthetic perception. Apply the laws of aerial perspective to your head pattern.The darkest line is the one closest to you. Consider the nature of contour lines and surface boundary lines.

We remind you that the borders of the sides of the head shape have a soft transition and various radii. The larger the radius, the less pronounced the boundary and the more difficult it is to determine. The light source, chiaroscuro helps. Translate the lines of the edges of the form into a soft, blurry state. For this, you will take only chiaroscuro from light and shadow; sure to use an aerial perspective!

Be convinced of the aforesaid again with simple examples, because all this is very important, and, without understanding, you simply cannot competently continue drawing.

Look at the hexagonal shape. No one can see a drawn cube in it, because it is not three-dimensional. It lacks the concept of volume, in contrast to the following geometric shape. Exactly the same difference between the drawings of students who blindly copy the model, from the drawings of students with three-dimensional thinking.

In the next row, we rounded a face at the cube. The question of the presence of a vertical line instead of the missing face has a negative answer, because the cube has no edge. There are no ribs, but the sides remained in their places. There must be some kind of border here, especially since there is a 90 degree difference between the surfaces of the cube! Even if this border is not visually visible, you must set it, otherwise at the stage of constructive analysis of the form in space, you will not be able to convey it as a volume.

Now let’s take the rounded face as part of the cylinder, or rather, its fourth part. If the cube is illuminated, a boundary between light and shadow (or glare) will appear on a part of the surface of the cylinder. The difference between the border between light and shadow on the cylinder from the same border on the cube is that this border is soft (blurry), not hard.

If in a constructive drawing at the first stages in places where the form rotates in space, you will indicate sharp edges instead of soft, and then, when modeling the form, round them with chiaroscuro, will this somehow destroy the form? On the contrary, it will reveal. Form is always volume in space. Space is three-dimensional, which means that the form in space is three-dimensional.

The form has the boundaries of spaces. The question is: where are these boundaries in the shape of the human head, because it is all so rounded? Only your constructive analysis of the human head model can give an answer to this question, and the more you become aware, the more you will see.