3/4 turn self portrait form life!?

#1

In art class were doing self portraits with mirrors and I chose to do a 3/4 turn. Any help on doing this would be appreciated, like how would I set up my construction lines, stuff like that.:slight_smile:

#2

This is just my experience. It’s worked for me in the past.

The head is comprised of planes, which you have to take into consideration when doing a 3/4 view. The centre line will not necessarily be the obscuring line for the nose. A good example would be to take a piece of thread and run it from the middle of your forehead to your chin, and look at your self in the mirror from the 3/4 angle.

The cranial part of the head is essentially a mishapen sphere, with the eyes falling just below the centre line. It may help you draw this sphere first to gauge where the centre-line is on both axes.

Pay attention to your skull. Sounds stupid, I know, but if you think abut your head in terms of it’s bone structure first, you’ve get a better idea of the structure on top, especially when bringing in cheekbones, eye sockets and forehead planes.

Don’t draw in lines that aren’t there. Draw a contour of your portrait first, then shade in the details. Look at your face in relation to the negative space of the background to better gauge the outline. Using a line to define areas like the inner curve of the nose and lips can make your drawing look rigid and unrealisitc. Organic shapes curve, they don’t stop suddenly.

Mmmmyep. That’s the best I can do right now without actually posting pictures. In the past I would have just referred you to the loomis site, but that’s been taken down!

#3

Thanks for the nice response erilaz!! Ill try this out tomorrow at school!:scream: but no need to worry about the loomis site, I have all his books in .PDF format thanks to…
http://www.placidchaos.com/AM/

#4

Awesome. His stuff should really help you break down the structure.

#5

If you haven’t seen it, Ron Lemen has touched on this topic in the following tutorial:

http://www.anticz.com/heads.htm

#6

thanks for that link. the books (pdfs) are awesome.

cheers,
Bob

#7

Aye thanks,

those books by ‘Andrew Loomis’ is great !

#8

would anyone mind putting this file on rapidshare or different mirrors? I get an extremely slow download speed on those pdf’s

#9

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