Chopping as a basis for understanding complex volumetric shapes. Construction of the human head
When I was in art college, we were taught to see and understand form from general volumes, gradually narrowing our attention to smaller details. Learning this approach to drawing and understanding the shape of surrounding objects will help
Chopping off the head as a method of drawing a picture
The method is based on the idea of simplifying any complex shape to the level of primitive geometric shapes, and subsequent tonal analysis of these shapes in space.
This method teaches the artist to look at the shape of any object more consciously, constantly analyzing spatial characteristics such as depth, sharpness, saturation.
And if there is a basis for understanding how this or that environmental object (real or fictional) that we want to draw is constructed, then in our illustrations we can consciously manipulate these indicators, creating more voluminous and interesting pictures.
I’ll tell you how to do this today, at least I’ll try to push all self-taught people in the right direction on the path of artistic self-education.
“An Artist's View”
Before moving on to the theory, I want to focus your attention on this. How an artist looks at the objects around us. The artist analyzes any object like a 3D scanner. He looks, as it were, through an object and sees it as “transparent”. Not in the literal sense of course. It’s just that if the object being studied is transparent, then an understanding immediately comes of how this object looks in space from all sides.
Understanding the general shape of an object and knowing the law of aerial perspective as “closer is richer, further away is more subdued,” you can depict any object correctly in terms of the volume of the form.
Chopping. Let's start with simple forms
For example, consider a simple cube. The fact that the cube has edges, I think, is clear to everyone and does not require additional comments.
Let's imagine an image of a cube in the form of a frame form (transparent) where all its faces are visible. Let's draw all the lines of the same thickness. The result is a flat drawing.
Now let’s remember the concepts of aerial perspective “closer is more saturated, further away is more subdued” and apply this rule to the drawing of our cube. We will make the lines that are closer to the viewer's eye thicker, and the lines that are further away will be thinner.
on the diagram (Fig.2) I have highlighted the closest point with a red circle; it will be the most saturated. further downwards, the gaze gradually slides along the faces of the cube, the thickness of which should decrease. With red lines I show eye movement.
Let's move on to building more complex objects. Head trimming
When the task is to “construct” a complex object in a drawing, it is extremely important to determine the point that, according to the artist’s plan, should be located closest to the viewer. - this will be the starting point, which will be the most contrasting and rich in our drawing. Further, when constructing the form, we should never forget about this point and all subsequent lines should be more subdued in tone and not so saturated.
Without knowing these basics, you can observe drawings where the artist depicts the ear in a portrait, for example, in more contrast than the nose. But we already know that this cannot happen according to the laws of aerial perspective, since the ear is further from the viewer than the nose
in art schools, in order to train future artists and teach them to feel how the saturation of one or another “node” in a drawing changes, they use a plaster model - cutting off the head, simplified to planar forms, hence the name “cutting off”. According to such a model, whatever you say , it is easier to understand and track how this or that point is located in relation to the artist’s line of sight.
Understanding these fundamentals is basic and opens up endless possibilities for the artist to experiment in drawing with form and space.
If you omit these basics and do not try to understand the form, then the drawing will be “flat” and not expressive.
Learning to look at objects in the environment “correctly”
To consolidate this skill of spatial vision of the shape of objects, I recommend regularly practicing creating simple sketches of the objects of people around you
The main goal of quick sketches will be to create a linear drawing in which the shape of the object in space should be clearly visible. Always keep in mind the rule of aerial perspective “closer is richer, further away is softer”
Using the example of these sketches, it is clearly visible that the artist emphasized the area located closest, with the most contrast. This is especially noticeable in the sketch on the far right. Note that the knee is richer in tone than the head. But not the other way around.
For professional artists, the spatial perception of form is already embedded at a subconscious level, and the work process looks easy and natural. But behind this “ease” there are years of practice of “conscious” drawing and constant detailed analysis of the form.
When I was an art student, my drawing teacher constantly demanded that we "study" and "construct" whatever shape we drew. Understand how it looks from all sides, and not just from the side where the viewer’s gaze falls
How knowledge about the spatial construction of form helps in creating cartoon pictures.
How will chopping help?
The basis of a cartoon illustration is still a linear drawing. Regarding linear drawing, I recommend studying the lesson “” separately, where I explained in detail the methods of creating a linear drawing in the context of working on a cartoon character.
So, without the basics outlined above, it will be extremely difficult to create an expressive linear drawing. When working on a line, we reduce everything to our formula “closer - richer, further - softer” or if we talk about the line, then the rule can be formulated as follows: “in objects that we want to highlight and emphasize, the line should be thicker, everything that we consider insignificant for perception, there we make the line thinner"
As a rule, the construction of the head begins with more generalized forms; this method of construction is called CUT. Many famous masters began their masterpieces with this method of construction. I think you will be interested to know how this is done. So let's get started.
The depicted head is "cut off".
1) First we need to determine where our head will be on a sheet of paper (A3 or A2 format). To do this, we outline the overall dimensions by measuring the ratio of the width and height of the depicted object. It is best to leave more space on the front side.
2) Next, we will outline the total volume of the head, determine the angle, and the location of the front part in your angle.
3) divide the face into proportional parts of the face (in this perspective the midline of the eyes is located in the middle) outline the tip of the nose, bridge of the nose, brow ridges, midline of the mouth, chin.
4) Let’s find the inclination of the head itself, and the lines of the facial parts in perspective (reduction occurs)
What is closer to us seems larger, what is further away seems smaller, that is, it is shrinking.
5) Let’s find what angle the nose is at and build an axial one for the front part. We start by building the nose.
It all depends on our perspective, if we are below the depicted object, we see the lower edge of the nose, if to the right of the object, we see the right edge of the nose, and the frontal one, in perspective (as in our case. Here are examples of constructing a nose by chipping.
6) in the same way we will construct other parts of the face:
Eyes
Lips and chin
The entire face and head should be built along the edges. And as a result we get this:
WORK ON HATCHING
1) Determine from which side the light falls.
In our case, Top right.
In this case, the edges that receive direct light are the lightest, those that receive the sliding light are slightly darker, and the darkest edges are turned away from the light. One should not forget about reflexes, but they are no brighter than light. If you are drawing a plaster head (as in my case) do not forget about the materiality of the plaster. Border contrasts should be strengthened, and reflexes and light should be brighter.
In the end, this is what happens:
P.S. Thanks to everyone who liked my lesson, I tried my best. I will be glad to see your robots. And good luck to you in your endeavors and talents. If you have questions about the lesson. I will listen and help in any way I can. Sorry for the quality of the images (taken on a mobile phone). The author of the first cutting is Art_Yana. Source
In this drawing lesson, I prepared the material so that the key principles of drawing a human head were visible. To learn how to draw a portrait, you need to understand the shape of the head, and this is possible through simplification and generalization of unnecessary details. For this purpose, I used a schematic representation of a head called “chipping,” an academic drawing of a skull, a step-by-step drawing of a human head, and additional schematic drawings to help understand the features of the anatomical structure.
1. Three-dimensional form. Simplification and generalization.
At the initial stage of learning to draw, people most often see the contours of an object instead of its volume. This is exactly how beginners draw a portrait: they draw the contours of the eyes, nose... But a person’s head, eyes, nose, lips - they all have volume, they are not just contours. In addition, they have a rather complex shape. Therefore, at the beginning of training, you need to be able to generalize the secondary and realize the scope of each form.
First, let's try to draw a person's face with a protruding nose and forehead, presented in the form of rectangular geometric shapes.
2. The skull is the basis of the head shape.
There is one important lesson to learn next. All the main curves and contours of the face are formed from the bulges and bends of the skull. After all, it is the skull that is the basis on which the shape of the head in a portrait is built. Try to trace this relationship by comparing the shape of the skull with the pattern of the head. This is a very important point in learning.
Since the skull has a complex shape, it will not be easy to immediately understand this relationship. Therefore, first we will draw a skull in general.
The skull consists of two main sections: the brain and the face.
In addition, the shape of the skull can be roughly represented as a cube. The skull has a frontal side, two lateral sides, an occipital side and the so-called cranial vault or roof.
After the conventional, generalized drawings, I give as an example an academic academic drawing of a skull. With many details, you can see the frontal, occipital, lateral sides and arch. You can also see how the details are grouped into two main sections - the brain and the face.
It should also be noted that the widest part of the skull is located closer to the back of the head. It can be clearly seen in the figure below.
For those learning to draw a portrait, the following anatomical names for the various parts of the skull may be useful:
- brow ridges;
- frontal bone;
- parietal bone;
- occipital bone;
- temporal bone;
- zygomatic process;
- cheekbone;
- maxillary bone;
- mandibular bone;
- nasal bone;
- eye socket or eye socket.
3. “Orubovka” is the key to understanding the shape of the human head.
In addition to the skull, the shape of the head and face is influenced by muscles, cartilage, fat deposits, etc. In order not to get confused in the details, trimming will help you understand the anatomical structure. A cut is a conventional image of a person’s head, consisting of edges. With the help of such planes the volume of the entire head is formed. Thanks to these edges, the main curves of the skull and the main muscle groups of the face are clearly visible. In any portrait, for any person, the shape of the head is built on the basis of these trimming edges. Of course, each person has his own facial features, his own proportions, but the key points in the construction of the head correspond to the cutting. Therefore, when drawing a portrait, the artist always keeps these key facets in mind.
Try to trace the main planes of the cut in the drawing of the skull and in the tonal drawing of the head made in pencil.
4. Formation of volume through light and shade on the front, side and top sides of the head.
To make the head drawing three-dimensional, it needs to be worked out with shading. Hatching creates the desired tone. By changing the tone (lighter-darker) we see volume and shape. According to the law of chiaroscuro, light is distributed on the surface of the form in the following sequence: highlight, light, penumbra, shadow, reflex, falling shadow. If you draw a ball or similar simple geometric shapes, then everything is much simpler. But how to show chiaroscuro in a tonal drawing of a human head? In the portrait, chiaroscuro is also done with shading, as in the drawing of the ball. But with the difference that the artist must trace the light and shadow on each individual fragment of the face in particular and on the entire head as a whole. That is, you need to show light, penumbra, shadow - on the nose, on the forehead, on the eye sockets, on the lips, chin, etc. But besides this, light and shadow need to be shown on the entire head as a whole, that is, on its main large faces or sides. For example, one side of the head may be darker than the other. This is an important point when creating the volume of the head in a portrait.
For a better understanding of this topic, I give as an example visual diagrams and drawings of a plaster stump, a human skull and head. In them you can clearly see the front, side and top edges of the head. The diagrams and pencil drawings are designed in such a way that they can be used to gradually trace the main edges of the head, which will help novice artists see the chiaroscuro on the surface of the head as a whole.
5. Brain and facial sections of the head.
Above I have already given a schematic drawing in which the brain and facial parts of the skull were visible. But how to practically see these areas in drawing a portrait? A number of drawings and diagrams below can help with this. Here you can trace the boundary between the front and brain parts of the head in the usual pencil drawing, plaster casting and training drawing of the skull.
6. Step-by-step tonal pencil drawing.
After studying the basic anatomical features of the structure of the head, you can begin step-by-step pencil drawing. Here you need to learn this sequence. First we draw in general terms. Then we complicate the drawing by adding details.
A) Since the shape of the head resembles the shape of an egg, we first draw the corresponding figure with a line.
b) After this, we construct a drawing of the head. Draw an axis of symmetry that will run through the middle of the head. This is very important because the axis will allow you to compare the left and right sides, which will help to avoid errors and irregularities. Next, we outline the levels at which the eyebrows, eyes, nose, and lips are located. We outline them using light lines. I wrote about how to determine these levels in the lesson
V) At the next stage, you can outline the eye sockets, eyes, nose, lips, as well as the cheekbone, frontal lobes, main muscle groups and folds on the face.
A month ago, I recruited a small group of students to whom I entrusted the difficult but rewarding task of preparing for a portrait.
As you know, we adhere to the classical school of drawing, so our first serious work was the drawing of the stub. A chip is a plaster head, as if “cut out,” that is, not molded in full accordance with human anatomy, but made from planes, which adds a certain complexity to it, but at the same time, as they say? "It's hard to learn, it's easy to fight!"
There are many problems that a high-quality drawing of this textbook solves, and most importantly, they need to be solved with all seriousness, here lies at the level of “I see it this way” will not work at all, because any viewer will notice any of the errors, from portrait dissimilarity, which is called The artists “didn’t get into character,” to the point of perspective violations.
I specifically went to the search engine now to find examples of drawings by different people. Look for yourself: they depict completely different people! The reason is simple. Students are considered physically ready to draw a person if they have completed a consistent course of academic drawing, starting with simple still lifes and posing of geometric bodies, to plaster rosettes and capitals. We had all this too.
And yet we, too, despite many years of training for some students, are faced with the same problem. My instinct told me - even before the task of arranging the head on the sheet, offer to draw a sketch. In other words, to get to know and “touch” with a pencil for the first time. The result upset me: no one “found” the nature of the cutting. This meant that you can let them arrange things, and they can handle it, they are literate, give them knowledge of proportions according to the ancient canon, and they will also put them on a sheet of paper, you can talk about the formative planes, and they, yes, they are able to build, there is confirmation of this - drawings by the Artist. But the most important thing that is needed in a portrait, character, will remain “behind the scenes.” And this would be an unacceptable gap in the curriculum, so we agreed to devote another lesson to “probing,” and the results satisfied me to a greater extent, although not completely. The head was recognizable, but it was different for everyone. We chose the standard method of study for our school - short sketches according to my method.
Here I will digress and make a slight digression from the topic, because people ask me this question, they are interested in this, and I need to answer sometime and somewhere. So, what goal should you set for yourself when drawing sketches? I, Olga Rubtsova, will answer without hesitation: the most important thing is to capture the character. The sleight of hand required by the artist is important here. Then anatomy, then literacy, and even design later, if you want to become an artist... Not an architect, not a designer, but a draftsman, an embodyer of an image, a thought, a fantasy... You need to learn to extract from your own inner world the most important thing that you are worried about what you want to share. And that's what artists are for. True, my husband, a sketching teacher, thinks differently. He makes sketches with an emphasis on dynamics, teaches to recognize flows, spots, in a word, this work is more intellectual than I suggest, and it is aimed more at developing logic and a proportional eye. Of course, you can combine two types of sketches, and you can even find your own tasks and make sketches in your own way, for your own purpose, but one thing is important - quantity turns into quality, otherwise we are no longer drawing a sketch. It already smells like a sketch, a sketch, anything, but not a fleetingly caught breath of the breeze...
So, we started working head on with sketches. For our Artist, these were average sketches in terms of the number of minutes, 5 minutes each. Four years ago we began to reduce the time and the result was not long in coming: from one to three minutes pictures like this appear.
And so, yesterday was the third day of cutting. I asked to bring stretched tablets and was mentally ready to once again talk in detail about the canons of construction, about the features of the model, about the reference points and... let me go swimming... But my guys asked to give them one more day to study the head.
Do you know why I love an adult student? Because he knows how to be responsible. You don’t need a stick, you don’t need to persuade or look for an approach. Strictness is also necessary, but it leads to criticism and the desire not to deviate from the principle. But I have one principle - let there be few students, because I demand a lot, because it’s difficult, but they will have the maximum chance of success, in other words, they will be able to learn how to draw on their own...
And here are pictures from the scene.
Start. Psychological preparation is already in sharpening the pencil. It should be sharp, obedient, flexible :). Do you recognize the box in the frame? :)) Half of it is already filled with shavings! This is a good indicator, it’s an indicator of labor!
The head is waiting. Like any nature with which you have to work, it must be carefully thought out, designed, tested, about... You have to guess about it :), because everyone knows that we can only see one side of the moon, which means that if the nature not a child, not an animal, not a free bird - use it, draw, draw mentally and for real, a lot, a lot!
This time Sasha sat down, it was next to the door, but soon he moved to his favorite place - next to the study cabinet)). You see how curious the watercolor jars are, and probably the samples of drawings from the books want to jump out and take a closer look at Sasha’s work... Sasha, can you show me?
Isn't it true that it already looks similar?! In a week we will start building on a large sheet of paper. The main goal has been achieved - we have gotten to know each other, although, of course, it’s too early to switch to “you” :)). The learning environment... Everyone is serious... In the first picture, on the left, Elena Nikolaevna. She is a beginner and is still drawing a cylinder. In our groups it is possible to solve different problems in the same lesson, since the approach is individual. This means that we are waiting for students of any level, and they will be able to work at their stage of training as slaves with those who are a little ahead, in this I even see some kind of incentive to grow, develop, catch up...
By the way, behind the students there are two cabinets filled with props :). ABOUT! This is my special pride! I probably need to write a story somehow about how I collected it, how interesting it is in terms of themes... In general, here are three photographs on the site with a small part of our collection of jugs and antique kitchen utensils :).
So... Yeah, Sasha went to the door again and sat down next to Alsou. This is right. You need to look at nature from different angles, you need to sketch it in different ways, perhaps it will turn out to be similar...
And this is what we came up with at the end of the lesson:
In my opinion, he is already quite a recognizable comrade!
Reporting from the scene will be continued with the next stage of drawing and with the next successes, stay in touch, write, come meet and learn :). And by the way, it’s not too late to join the head drawing group!
P.S. I apologize to those who were not included in the shot. However, you weren’t particularly eager :))
Ideally, of course, you should draw from life. But, unfortunately, few people have plaster heads, arms, legs and skulls at home. And when you draw on a computer, it’s even more difficult to draw from life, since you can’t drag the computer with you into the right room, where there is light and a still life.)
Therefore, you often have to practice your skills by drawing from photographs. To prevent drawing from turning into a process of mindless copying, you need to draw with analysis.
Here is the original photo (taken from the Internet):
Before starting work, you need to study and analyze the source code.
"Minimum program":
1. Shape and lighting are analyzed. We pay attention to which edges face the light and which are turned away from the light.
Lighting comes from above. Therefore, the upper part and protruding parts are the lightest. Then there is a gradation from light to partial shade, then a shadow and a reflex on the lower part of the jaw - again a slight gradation to a lighter one. This is how the general forms go. At the same time, there are parts that are more turned away from the light, and therefore darker. (eye sockets, cheekbones, chin)
The skull itself, despite the fact that it is a block, is similar in shape to a ball. The edges of the head are rounded, which affects the non-uniform lighting of both the top and side faces.
In the photograph this gradation is not so visible, because photography “eats” at least half the tones compared to nature, but, nevertheless, it is present. In a drawing, this gradation can and even should be made more obvious.
It may seem that the sides (head + cheekbone) are a cast mold. In fact, this is not true. The edges of the cheekbones and the edges of the skull itself are actually different faces. I'm attaching a side view of the file so you can see what it looks like.
2. Proportions are analyzed.
The main part of the skull fits into a square. In this case, the entire skull is divided into three approximately equal parts. The third part of it is occupied by the jaw.
After we have analyzed the overall shape, lighting and proportions, we begin the layout and construction.
Preliminary layout and primary constructions.
Subsequent constructions that build on the primary ones.
During construction, it is important not to forget to check the left and right sides for symmetry.
After construction, the volume is worked out.
First I outline the overall volume and lighting, similar in principle to a ball.
Then I pay attention to the protruding parts and to the parts that are turned away from the light.
I move from the general to the specific. I leave the highlights for later.
Construction lines can be transferred to the top layer so as not to lose proportions during development. In this case, layers with constructions should be made translucent so that they do not interfere with the tone set. Or you can remove them altogether if they get in the way (they often get in the way for me, so I rarely use them).
Start each new stage on a new layer so that, in case of failure, this layer can be deleted without regret. =)
Then there are the final stages where I refine the lighting details and add contrast. Construction lines are no longer needed, they can be made invisible, deleted or left with a layer with constructions with a density of about 5 percent, so that they slightly separate the edges from each other, and then finish the work on top of them.
The last stage goes to the finals.
I hope this was interesting.
Thank you for your attention. =)
