Week 11: Anatomy study: female face

 This week is another anatomy study, but with focus on the anatomy of the face.
There are some general rules, as there are in the world of anatomy. The eyes are in the middle of the head is an example. Even if one knows these rules by heart they should be more viewed as guidelines as every human is unique and has unique features. It's good to have these guidelines in mind, but if one would follow them one wouldn't capture the model's actual look.This is what I kept in mind during this study.

The first sketch is just to get going and the hands working. A simply piece to first get to know the face I'm drawing. A little study of the eye and mouth are also visible in the bottom of the sketch. Since this was made in 7 minutes there was quite some time to do some measuring and get the features right. However, I didn't aim to have time for any big shadings and worked more with just lines and some simple key shadings.

The second sketch was made in 10 minutes. I put my focus on the features of the face, to get the profile right, the eyes, nose, mouth and cheek. I made a dark backdrop to make the profile stand out more. Even though it's very unfinished I am fairly happy with the anatomy and likeness, even though the model have a bit of a wicked look, which is entirely my own fault.

The third attempt at 20 minutes was a bit of a failure according to me. I should have been able to do more shading. Instead I worked to slow and put way much time on getting the anatomy as spot on as I could. I didn't even draw the ear and the rest of the left hand side of the head.

The fourth piece is also unfinished, but much better than the third attempt. I did the measuring in good time and I did shaded the entire face. Only the hair was left out, but that wasn't my main focus. I did some lines to show the direction of the hair and left it like that. If I would have any spare minutes at the end of the 25 minutes I would have done some more on the hair.