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Using a plumb bob (pictured here) I carefully place pin pricks for the succinct locations of the facial features. A plumb bob main job is to ascertain vertical alignments; it can also be used for horizontal alignments and angles if you have a steady hand and eye.
Since I am well assured of the placement of the nose (it’s base, the anterior nasal spine and alar separator) it is a fairly straightforward process for the trained artist to gauge the width of the nose – nair to nair.
The inner canthi (singular: canthus) of the eyes are placed by plumbing upwards from the nairs. Using a knitting needle you can sight the width of the nose and compare that to the width of each eye thus establishing the outer canthi. Also from the nose and the inner canthi the nodes of the mouth are located. Be sure to acknowledge the tilt of the head as you fix the axes of the facial features.
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With the pinpricks accurately placed it is a fairly straight forward process to sketch in the features with a sharp crayon. The gaze of the eyes counterbalance the left-heavy weight of the head within the tondo. If I had directed the gaze leftwards the drawing would fail miserably.
There is a school of thought that one should skip this step and proceed tonally. The argument is that there are no lines in nature, all is tone. That is true, of course, and line is an invention. Art is derived from artifice.
I love the qualities of line and it is really of matter of subjective timbre than dogmatically arguing what is right or wrong in drawing.
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To further buttress and augment the facial forms I assiduously block-in the darks, again, with my 4B black conte. This time, though, I am striving for greater accuracy in the shapes of dark than with the initial blocking in.
Anticipating that I will soon have to work up the softer edges of my form shadows I extend the blocked-in darks a little beyond their borders. This will give me sufficient pigment on the paper that I can push and manipulate and, consequently, knit into the lights.
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As before, I stump down the blocked in conte with my little finger.
And, again, as before, I reach out for the defibrillator. It is always a bit heartbreaking to loose your pinpricks and carefully rendered features. Even after all these years.
Drawing is not always, nor should it be, a commute of anticipated expectations. The joy of drawing lies in the unexpected and subsequent challenges. Even though I have deliberated pushed the envelope here it still gives me pause.
And, again, I push and pull out the forms with my kneaded eraser.
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The additive/subtractive process of constructing form is, for many artists, the most difficult skill to master. It simply cannot be learned from books. Sure, one can pick up tips on how to do this and that from a multitude of sources but that is a slow and laborious process with little gain. It’s better to acquire a solid foundation and to do that requires training. The English painter, Thomas Gainsborough (a bitter rival of Thomas Lawrence) was fond of quoting: ‘The self-taught artist learns from an ignorant master.’ It is as apt today as it was then.
For the intermediate artist who has acquired the skill of striking the arabesque and has an understanding of facial anatomy my four hour workshop The Practice of Tone is worth considering.
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