For the past couple weeks, both in class and for homework, Katya Held, my teacher at Studio Incamminati, assigned me several head plates from the Bargue drawings. Plate 38 is a profile drawing, plate 43 is a woman’s head in profile but slightly turned toward the viewer, and plate 52 is a front facing portrait. I realized right away how much higher the stakes are when drawing heads and faces – if you get the likeness exactly correct when drawing an arm, hand, or leg, chances are you won’t hear someone say “Hey! I recognize that hand – that’s Fred’s hand!” But, if you don’t get the likeness spot-on with a face or head, you will absolutely hear “That doesn’t look like Fred at all.” When you don’t get the lines and angles precisely correct for these plates, the imperfections jump off the page, because the missed likeness to the subject is immediately apparent.
For example, with my drawing of plate 38 (the profile), the diagonal plum line I drew from the brow to the chin was slightly angled too much inward. This obviously made the chin not come out far enough and the whole jaw look too small. I also made the hair above the forehead too short. If this was an actual subject, possibly named Fred, I would have drawn his face too thin, head too long, and his hair too short. Probably not a happy client.
With plate 43, I felt I got a little closer to the likeness of the original drawing. But, despite being very close, overall, a minor detail in the angle of the nose definitely makes the subject in my drawing look like the bridge of her nose comes out farther, making the entire nose look slightly larger.
For plate 52, my main goal was to set my height and not cheat this week (over the past few weeks, I’ve been caught altering my original height as my drawings progress, which is a big no-no). I successfully stuck to the height I set at the outset of the drawing, but I completely missed the height-to-width ratio. The subject in my drawing has a much longer neck and thinner face. I should have went wider with the heard, which would have corrected the overall proportion of the head and neck.
The goal of realist painting and drawing is to get as close of a likeness as possible to your subject. These exercises were valuable in learning the importance of every detail in the angle of the lines, height-to-width, etc. And important reminders that I have a long way to go and a lot of practice still ahead.
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