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Deviation Actions
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Gesture and construction are like the yin and yang of drawing - they work in opposition to each other, so it is a good idea to practice separating them to isolate one, which will then explain what the other isn't. (Gesture is about capturing expression of the whole; construction is about building the parts. When you do one, you negate the other.)
The emphasis here is on construction. These heads have expressive faces that show emotion; yet they are mushy, because either there is no underlying construction (meaning they were drawn from the outside from reference, without a construction), or the construction is weak.
By construction I refer to underlying structure. This can be skeletal anatomy. But even a correct understanding of bone structure won't convey the desired sense of solidness without conceptual, or design, structure. By design structures I mean the basic forms (i.e., egg, box, pipe, and wedge). Base the heads (and basically anything you draw) on any one of these, or combination of them, to get the effect for which you're looking. For example, boxy (use a box), smooth, use an oval with a box. In Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters, author Robert Beverly Hale shows how MichaelAngelo used these construction techniques, which are well explained by Hale's student and successor, Bridgman.
Once you lock on to the structural approach using basic forms, you'll find it MUCH easier to convincingly light the head/portrait (i.e. #2 above).
A primary exercise to do all the time even when you're not drawing is deconstruction. Look around you, pick a subject as if you were going to draw it, and break it into basic forms. See a tree? Break it into pipes and wedges - see the egg, or oval, describing the perimeter of the branches. Probably no boxes here, but look for them, anyway - nature has a way of surprising one.
In the FAC it's said that anything complicated can be reduced to the basic forms. That is how one begins to draw even the most complicated of subject matter.
Anyway - main thing - good exercise!
The emphasis here is on construction. These heads have expressive faces that show emotion; yet they are mushy, because either there is no underlying construction (meaning they were drawn from the outside from reference, without a construction), or the construction is weak.
By construction I refer to underlying structure. This can be skeletal anatomy. But even a correct understanding of bone structure won't convey the desired sense of solidness without conceptual, or design, structure. By design structures I mean the basic forms (i.e., egg, box, pipe, and wedge). Base the heads (and basically anything you draw) on any one of these, or combination of them, to get the effect for which you're looking. For example, boxy (use a box), smooth, use an oval with a box. In Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters, author Robert Beverly Hale shows how MichaelAngelo used these construction techniques, which are well explained by Hale's student and successor, Bridgman.
Once you lock on to the structural approach using basic forms, you'll find it MUCH easier to convincingly light the head/portrait (i.e. #2 above).
A primary exercise to do all the time even when you're not drawing is deconstruction. Look around you, pick a subject as if you were going to draw it, and break it into basic forms. See a tree? Break it into pipes and wedges - see the egg, or oval, describing the perimeter of the branches. Probably no boxes here, but look for them, anyway - nature has a way of surprising one.
In the FAC it's said that anything complicated can be reduced to the basic forms. That is how one begins to draw even the most complicated of subject matter.
Anyway - main thing - good exercise!