Drawing a portrait

[Music] w [Music] ever since men have had eyes to see they've been looking at one another and have often recalled absent Faces by means of carvings or drawings we can tell something of the appearance and character of an individual from out of the past by Looking Through The Eyes of an artist perhaps long forgotten even a chance doodle may be expressive which of us has not tried to draw faces this is Joyce deal of whom I hope to get a likeness a portrait is a portrait only if it suggests the subject no one moreover likes to wind up under any such ignominious title as girl in a white dress or character study while there could be careful considerations of composition we are more interested today in the mere drawing of a likeness we shall begin then by placing the face in the center and making it large enough to see clearly as there are many angles from which a face may be viewed I have to determine the most becoming or characteristic one then I draw an ellipse this will orientate the face and features and thus prevent the frequent mistake of having the eyes pointing one way the nose another and the mouth somewhere else now is a good time to set aside all the old wives tals the body is 7 and a half heads High the eyes are halfway from the chin to the top knot and so forth there is no standard person an ey Line run through the inner corners or tear ducts will serve to give the level of the eyes now locate them on this this line watching the comparative size of the eyes themselves and of the gap between them this is easier for anyone trained to gauge comparative distances Carpenters dress makers and open Field Runners should do it well note the change of expression as by animation I move the eyes making them high at the outer corners or low the shape of the upper lid may be curved and the highest point in this curve may be at its center near the tear duct or towards the outer Corner the wrinkle where the upper lid folds back may be high low or not visible at all and the eye may be rectangular flat on top or triangular the the iris may be large or small and either entirely exposed as with many Mediterranean people or it may partly covered by the lid since habits in drawing as well as in living form so easily you should guard against them the long necks and pointed chins of one painter the chalky complexion of another or the Misty Eyes of a third not only does the a more distant eye seem less wide than the near one but even on a flat paper it has an entirely different shape early in the mapping of the face we should locate the jog between the eyebrows this four-sided figure or Keystone here drawn on the face for demonstration only varies as much in different individuals as any proper feature while it may be wide narrow or tall it changes into a mere jog as the face turns into profile position it almost never starts at the level of the eyes but is often Higher by a quarter of an inch or more since the KE Keystone is a flat plane as is the bridge of the nose these lines are merely indications to show the position of the planes here are the farads and nose planes of this particular face and now I compare the nose angle with the lip to chin line between each is a jog the Keystone and the underside of the nose there are also planes of the neck and jaw on this other face the angles differ not only from one another but from other lines in the same head and are entirely different from the angles of any other person there are no two of us alike compare these lines with any vertical in the background in transferring them to paper use the edge of the drawing board to replace the vertical as a basis for comparison to draw them make a pass in the air and you'll find that the plane of the bridge of the nose is about at this angle the nostril may be either higher or lower than the tip of the nose or level with it mouths may be thought of as having five Puffs one of which shows the upper lip overlapping the lower the lower lip has two Puffs on either side sometimes with a crack or indented Place between them the rorius or the muscle that retracts the corners of the mouth has varying Ang angles as with the eyes the two sides of the mouth will vary when a face turns away from us the nearer one of course being larger these variations in turn all relate to one another including the Clift in the upper lip that of the thickness of both upper and lower lips and the crease which sometimes shows under the lower lip the mouth is not inscribed on a flat pan but fits over the dental Arch which curves and is as variable as the words that may come out of it since we've left the original ellipse unchanged like an egg our sketch looks like one of the Man in the Moon if we consider the face again as a series of planes we can slice the egg to make it more like the model first locate the widest part of the cheekbone and the corner of the jaw these vary not only with a sitter but with the way she sits do not require your model to sit too still or you will lose the feeling of form and third dimension while we are well aware that the skull rests on the end of the spinal column it is difficult to locate this point notice that the fingers do not move as the head nods this is because the ear holes Mark its point of attachment most important then is the location of the ears lack of time prevents us from further discussion of anatomy and also from any consideration of feeling and design I have used no shading as that will vary with a medium and is covered in another film the purpose of this film will have been accomplished if I have helped you to realize a new the extraordinary differences that there are in faces and have encouraged you to compare angles with other angles as well as Dimensions with other dimensions do not attempt at first to combine character reading with portrait painting but be content to try for a likeness and to avoid some of the habit forming mistakes that can so easily enslave us when drawing a portrait 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