Artist & Display Face Class #1, Milwaukee Sketch Club notes

Attended 1st Face Class at Artist & Display taught by Pam Scesniak. We learned basic proportions for an average straight on view of a face. Here's what I remember. (She told us not to worry if we don't remember everything because we will be reviewing this info every week.) We looked into a tiny mirror to try to visualize what she was saying while using Canson eedition? paper & a 2B pencil. (She mentioned that softer pencils make a darker line and smudge, while harder pencils, used by illustrators and architects, make a fine gray line. From my previous life I know pencils range from hard, 6h-1h, hb, 1b-6b, softest.) Then after we got the basic proportions in we used conte sticks in white, light gray, reddish brown and black to shade in our picture, both face and background. She also showed us how to smear.

• 1st you start with a 1/4" dot about 2" over & up from center to make the pupil
  
• Then you draw overlapping 1/4" circles around pupil to get an average size of the iris.
• Draw rounded triangles on each side of the iris, one with a tear duct.
• Flatten top of iris slightly where upper lid touches it.
• Remember the eye sits in the eye socket, so lightly draw a circle using the whites as the diameter guide.
  
• The eyebrow generally sits on top of the eye socket.
• Draw the other eye, one eye width away. Remember no 2 eyes are exactly alike.
• Then the length of the nose to the septum is about 1.5 eye widths.
• Draw in the nostrils, the edges of the nose which line up with the inner corner of the eyes and the ball that sits on the nose.
• The distance to the upper lip is about 1 eye height?
• Draw the opening of the mouth (cupid's bow) and the bottom lip, then the circle of the chin.
• Then looking at the face draw the brow, the sides of the face, the hair on the top of the head. (Now the rest of the steps I'm a little fuzzy on.
  
• The ears are generally from the eyes to the nose long
• The neck starts down from the ears and is wider than you think
• The shoulders start higher up than you think.

This method actually worked fairly well, but I don't get much chance to do faces straight on in Sketch Club. Next week we're going to make a face in clay.

I'm still using the brown paper at Milwaukee Sketch club, it's tough with a nice texture, but now I've added General's compressed Pastel Chalk in earthtones.

• I worked first with the vine charcoal to put in the proportions and darks. Then put in the lights with white.
• Then I just worked back and forth between darks, black & brown; lights, white & pink?; and mediums, medium brown and reddish brown.
• I only managed 2 pictures, one unfinished. The first picture I smudged it and it looks very smooth. The second one I was trying to build up layers without smudging so the eye would blend the colors, a technique someone told me about. I would like to be able to draw faster.