Michael Britton - Fundamentals of portrait drawing - Podstawy Rysowania Portretów.pdf - RYSOWANIE książki - PDF - Nisiulka

Fundamentals of

Portrait Drawing

Michael Britton

2nd Edition

haracter is the essential truth of any

natural object, whether ugly or beauti-

ful; it is even what one might call a

double truth, for it is the inner truth

… Everything in nature has character; for the

unswerving directness of his [sic] observation

searches out the hidden meaning of all things.

And that which is considered ugly in nature

often presents more character than that which is

And as it is solely the power of character which

makes for beauty in art, it often happens that the uglier a being is in nature, the more beautiful

There is nothing ugly in art except that which is without character, that is to say, that which

offers no outer or inner truth.

Whatever is false, whatever is artificial, whatever seeks to be pretty rather than expressive,

whatever is capricious and affected, whatever smiles without motive, bends or struts without

cause, is mannered without reason; all that is without soul and without soul and without truth;

all that is only a parade of beauty and grace; all, in short, that lies, is ugliness in art

When an artist, intending to improve upon nature, adds green to the springtime, rose to the

sunrise, carmine to young lips, he creates ugliness because he lies.

When he softens the grimace of pain, the shapelessness of age, the hideousness of perversion,

when he arranges nature  veiling, disguising, tempering it to please the ignorant publicthen

he is creating ugliness because he fears the truth.

To any artist, worthy of the name, all in nature is beautiful, because his eyes, fearlessly accepting

all exterior truth, read there, as in an open book, all the inner truth.

He has only to look into a human face in order to read there the soul within  not a feature

deceives him; hypocrisy is as transparent as sincerity  the line of a forehead, the least lifting of

a brow, the flash of an eye, reveal to him all the secrets of a heart.

Auguste Rodin

The Problem of Seeing and

Drawing

We all see , more or less, the same. It is our perception

of what is seen that is the major stumbling block

to drawing what we see. This stumbling block of

perception is accepting symbolic preconceptions for

what is really there. For various reasons, when we

begin to draw we refuse to accept the reality of what

we are looking at. A student will concentrate their

gaze upon, say, a nose, conscientiously note every

indentation and pore, scribble down a symbol of a

nose then wonder what went wrong. Worse, still,

a student will invest hours in a drawing, become

more and more frustrated and eventually convince

themselves that the drawing is correct and the model

wrong!

These symbolic preconceptions are insidious. As children we subscribe to a universal

code of symbols. Every child utilizes the same symbol for a tree, a lower, a person

(big head, tiny body), etc. As adults we build and elaborate upon these symbols. In

portrait drawing, students will render an eye according to this language of symbols.

There is no deep meaning, other than clinical interest, in these symbols. They are

simply a short-cut to seeing; paradigms, or models of experience, rather than the

‘real’.

This problem of perception can be corrected with knowledge and training. The

objective of this course is to employ a methodology that breaks down the human

head to its simplest components and build-up to that glinting expression that irst

appealed to us.

Drawing the human head is no more, nor less, dificult than drawing an apple. We will

begin with establishing the arabesque and the height/width ratio of that particular head.

From there we will establish the major landmarks (the brow ridge, the base of the nose,

the zygomatic arches and mastoid process) and, then, block-in the primary light/dark

pattern. Once that is established, the arabesque is reined, the features placed, and

then, and, only then, do we proceed with modeling the form.

Ellen – Proiling a Harsh

Melancholia

The most poignant portraits are of those

individuals who have been dealt a dificult

hand in the great card game of life. Ellen

immediately struck me as someone who has

not found much joy in her lurching journey

from crisis to crisis in the constant hope that

happiness lurks around the next corner, only

to ind yet another door closing shut offering

only a quick glimpse of blue skies and lower

carpeted ields of peace and tranquility. Her

game is Solitaire.

Cur, that I am, I found her futile loundering

intriguing – a quiet repose of sad acceptance

and loneliness, Ellen proffered an excellent

study.

Portrait drawing embraces much, much more

than the simple rendering of form and

light. Compare the inished drawing to the

photograph of Ellen. You’ll notice a few

differences. I drew the eyes smaller than they

really are and closed them a bit; melancholia

has an unslept, withdrawn quality. The

nose is rendered ruddier and redder. The

cheeks given a harsh edged quality. There

is a marked physiology to sadness, especially

depression.

Depression can also appear as a cold

and angry melancholia; the ancient Greeks

described it best – black bile.

As artists our job is to interpret and opine –

we are more than mere copyists.

Now, to work...

Quickly establish the arabesque. Slip

in gunslinger mode, squint down your

eyes and take your best shot.

Let’s look more closely at the

photograph of Ellen to ascertain the

major proportions and to discover the

unique qualities to Ellen’s head.

Well, isn’t that interesting, the width of Ellen’s

head from the far zygomatic to the back of the

hair is exactly equal from the intersection of

sternohyoideus muscle and biventer mandibulae

muscle to the top of the frontalis muscle, or frontal

bone. (Let me reiterate – you really should know

your anatomy. The portrait is a demanding subject

that requires precision, knowing all of the lumps

and bumps, their names and functions greatly

aids in meeting the demands of accurate portrait

drawing.)

Now is the time to check your

proportions. I trust that you have taken

your best stab at the gestural arabesque

before checking your height to width

proportions. That is how you train your

eye.

My proportions are a bit off, but they’re

close enough for now.

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