Day 150: Still heading in the right direction

So last time I blogged I was practicing heads. That was 11 days ago. A lot of water has passenger under the bridge since then and I’ve moved on...

...to drawing heads slightly differently!

As you can see it’s just more repetitive exercises designed to burn the shapes and proportions into the brain.

Its based on a technique where you model the head and find the positioning of the nose and ears using crosshairs - like this:

Looks really simple and once you get the hang of the idea it becomes simple.

But as I've been reading and learning, getting the shapes right means nothing if you don’t have a full understanding of the mechanics of what’s happening underneath. So I’ve also been carrying out a secondary exercise which focuses on the mechanics of the head and neck. Which looks like this:

The head and neck are depicted in a robotic manner with the neck resembling one of those bendy snakes you had as a kid, the joints represented as hinges and the neck muscles as pistons. Again it’s all been helpful.

Next will be drawing the head moving up and up and down from the front. I’ll probably blog about that over the weekend. In the meantime here are a couple of doodles I’ve drawn when Ive been taking a break from practicing.