Constructing the Features Handouts

Portrait Painting from a Photo Constructing the Features Handouts
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Transcript

I want to discuss some handouts that you can download and follow along with me. There's the eye, the nose and the mouth handout. So download those, print them out, grab a hard surface, and trace along with me and let's discuss them in more detail. Let's start with this more front facing eye where you can see the construction lines more clearly. And this center line that's coming through at an angle here represent the tilt of the eye slopes, either towards the nose or away from the nose in this drawing, the nose is on this side. And so it's basically the relationship between the inner to the outer corner of the eye, obviously, it won't be in your final painting, but it's just representing the tilt.

So if you you know, some eyes have like more of a slope inwards like a characteristic feature that's kind of CAD eyes, some eyes characteristically slope away from the nose. And also the tilt of the head can change like the, the perspective will change the tilt of the head eyes. So if the eyes if the heads children down the idle slope in towards the nose, and if the heads tilted back that perspective will make the eyes slope away from the nose. So you can take like a horizontal plumb line, check that relationship there. And then and yeah trace along as we're going you get a good kinetic feel for the construction of the features. So next we'll break the upper eyelid down and you can see how are breaking this curve into two angled straight lines with the apex favoring in towards the nose on this side.

So breaking the curve into two angled straight lines Apex favoring and towards the nose, you can break the lower eyelid down into two angled straight lines with the apex favoring away from the nose on the lower edge. So you get this kind of skewed rhombus effect where the apex is and I'm going to be calling the turning most point on a curve the apex where it's in towards the nose on the upper eyelid and away from the nose on the lower eyelid and then breaking down the upper eyelid crease. You can break that curve into angled straight lines, three angles Straight lines and for the lower eyelid, you can break it into two angled straight lines with the information favoring away from the nose, look for and two angles to describe the eyebrows as well. Don't just do it as a big generic curve that'll look really weak.

Instead break it down into two angled straight lines as well. And then the iris is fairly large takes up half of the white of the eye and it's partially covered on the top by the upper eyelid. That's really important because it gives the eye more of a relaxed look. If you can see the whole top of the iris and the pupil in your painting it gives it this like staring you by guide kind of feel. So make sure that it's partially covered at the top to get that more relaxed look. So moving on to the more rendered version of the eye and again, keep tracing along with me.

You can see how the eye curved the upper eyelid breaks down into two angled straight lines with the apex favoring towards the nose. The lower eyelid broken down into two angled straight lines Apex facing away from the nose, which is on this side of this drawing. As you do the final rendering, you'll really curve out this lower lid and have it really wrapped around the eye at the corner so you don't want like a big point on the corner and the outer corner of your eye. In the final and stay deal really wrap this around to show the curvature of the eyeball. Then breaking the crease of the eye into three angles, straight lines, they're slightly curving angled straight lines but really looking to nail those apexes which is what's going to give the structure and solidity to your construction and construction of your features. And then the lower eyelid broken down into two angled straight lines favoring the back of the, you know, away from the nose.

The Iris, like I said, it's fairly large takes up half of the white of the eye, and it's partially covered on the top by the upper eyelids. So that's really important. As you go into the pupil, those basically a cast shadow When the light source which is this represented here, is coming down on the face, that upper eyelid has a thickness to it. So it'll cast a shadow onto the eyeball. And you can use that cast shadow to actually connect to the top of the pupil as well. So looking at this, again, we're having the eye, the IRS partially covered at the top, then we're using a cast shadow that'll come down on the eye, and the pupil will kind of connect to that cast shadow.

So that gives it more of a relaxed look. This illustration down here shows how the pupil when there's like a strong light on it, or when the person's scared, the pupil get small, and when it's relaxed, or when there's like dimmer light and the pupil gets larger. So a lot of the time if you're painting, say a model from life and you have like a really strong light blasting on the model, their pupil might actually look small, so I'll tend to make it a little larger, again using that cast shadow that comes down from the upper eye to connect to the top and give it more of a relaxed look the curve of the eyelashes kind of curve and come off of the line of the upper eyelid and they grow in clusters so they're not just evenly spaced or straight like this. They curve and crisscross and glowing grown clusters and the lower eyelid there's some that curve and criss crossing glowing growing clusters coming off the lower eyelid and that's favoring the back of the eye so there's not so much eyelashes towards the front.

There is this really important little light rim of thickness to the sort of top shelf of the lower eyelid which is really important to get in so really observe that and definitely get that in it can just be like one little brushstroke kind of a pinky fleshy colored brushstroke, but it'll give a lot of dimension to your eyes and really make it look solid and structure and also don't forget the darker front plane to the Lower eyelid, that'll help really solidify like bringing the eye into the face. The highlight of the eye, the little white dot, which is a reflection of the light source, it occurs right at the edge of where the pupil meets the iris coming from the direction of the light source. And I'll show you how all of this applies to the demo. And when I do the demo. So and then looking at the profile I, you can see how the shape of the upper eyelid looks like a wedge shape.

So it's like a triangle. So avoid the temptation to sort of pull it back and curve it to make it into the shape of an eye, you know, it's like a full wedge shaped like a triangle, the line of the lashes kind of curve and come off of that line of the upper eyelid. And then we've got the pupil looks almost just like a line. It's like a dark little line coming down off of the line of the upper eyelid. And the iris looks like an oval. It's a circle in perspective, which is called an ellipse.

There is this little clear dome in front of the iris which is called the cornea. So you don't want to have the colored part of the eye extend all the way to the front, there is a little clear dome that sits in front of the iris. Also the upper eyelid has a certain thickness to it, they both do the lower eyelid as well. And the upper eyelid has more thickness than the lower eyelid. And so there's a certain angle created from the upper eyelid to the lower eyelid. And also if you think about like where the centerline of the eye is like if we have our pupil, we have our Iris and we have the cornea and the sort of center line through that where the upper eye crosses over the lower eyelid is just slightly lower than center.

So the vertical height of the upper eyelid is taller than the vertical height of the lower eyelid. And again, we've got that little light room of sickness showing on the top shelf of the upper eyes. lid. And then looking at the three quarter view, same considerations break the upper eyelid into two angled straight lines with the apex Raven in towards the nose, the lower eyelid in the final rendering go really round that out, get that little top light Ridge, get that little light rim of thickness to the lower eyelid. And again, make sure it really wraps around the curve of the eyeball. The Iris from a three quarter view will look like an oval sort of starting to see the turn of the iris it's not a full circle.

And also always set the eye socket into shadow. And that shadow gets darker, darker, darker as it rolls towards the crease of the upper eyelid. And there's a little darker front plane to the lower eyelid as well. So I think that'll really help you as you refine the features refining the eye and let's move to the mouth. So let's start with the front facing mouse and work through the center crease of the So it goes horizontal first and trace along with me. And then angled straight line going up, angled straight line going down.

This is like a big M, angled straight line going up again, angled straight line going down and then that horizontal note again and then the upper lip is sort of a curving angled straight line going up, down, up, curving angled straight line going down and the whole upper lip when the light source is coming down on the model will be in shadow and the lower lip we won't have any edge to describe the lower lip. The lower lip color will basically be like base class color mixed with a little bit more CAD red and white so it'll be the same tone as the flesh around it but it'll be a little bit pink here. So you'll put in that tone then the pink ear color, take us off brush and wiggle along that edge to create a totally lost edge here. And instead the definition to the lower lip comes from the shadow underneath the lower lip.

Which will often be a coolish color sort of a gray green often, and then the lower lip is constructed up to circular fat pad. So you'll get this little divot in the center. And sometimes they'll be like a highlight running through here. Depending on the direction of your light source, looking at the three quarter miles, it's the same considerations as the front mouse. Now you'll take all of the horizontals that were, you know, the base of the front view, and now they're receding to a vanishing point, which is kind of over here. And the whole face will really be receding to the vanishing point, the eyes, the nose, everything goes to that vanishing point.

And so again, the center line of the mouth can be constructed with a horizontal and an angle straight line going up and go straight line going down, up again, the horizontal distance is getting shorter that goes back into space down again and that little horizontal that anchors in the back corner of the mouth and then the eye upper lip kind of an angled straight line going up, down, up, curving angled straight line going down. Again the horizontal width is getting shorter as it turns back into space. The whole upper lip is in shadow when the light source is coming down on the model and it gets darker, darker, darker as it rounds into the centerline of the lip and then the lower lip there's no edge to the lower lip here, you might see a little divot between the two circular fat pads that make up the lower lip and the construction or the sort of edge of the lower lip is defined by this cool shadow underneath the lower lip.

And with the color of the lip, you'll probably use like a warm reddish brown for the upper lip. Cool the color a little bit as you move to the back corner of the mouth. And then it turns into this soft cool sort of gray green note with a lost edge that describes the muscle target like the back of the mouth. So that's the three Quarter mouth and then looking at the profile most so all the edges of the mouth will have soft edges except for this centerline of the lips. But with the profile, you'll want to get really sharp edge to right at this part here. So the upper lip cuts up at an angled straight line about a three quarter degree angle coming up 45 degree angle going up, and then it slopes in underneath the nose.

You can construct the sharper edge of the center crease with the mouth, it cuts up at a certain angle down and that little suggestion of the horizontal that anchors again, softens into the muscle tuck the back curving angled straight line going up and down and the whole upper lip sitting in a shadowy Brady brownie purpley kind of tone, which gets like darker and warmer as it rounds into the center line. No definition through here. With the front edge of the lower lip. It's sort of overshoot. From the centerline of the mouth and then cuts down at a certain angle, and then angles underneath the lip and out into the chin, and the structure of the lip is really defined by the shadow underneath the lower lip. So yeah, really study these angles here.

That's what's gonna really get you a nice looking profile. And you can see that the nose also by the way, sits half on and half off the face. So there's a tendency to make the nose like all the way off, but you can see how it's kind of half on and half off the face from a profile. And that takes us into the nose. This handout here you can see there's more of a constructed version of the drawings and a more rendered version. So basically, let's start with this constructed version of the profile nose.

And you'll break the curves as always into angled straight lines. Sometimes this here will just be more straight so you can kind of see what it's like on the person that you're painting. Sometimes you'll See the definition of the bony structure there and breaking the curves into angled straight lines. There's a really important insertion point right here where like the nose inserts into the skull, and that occurs like right above the tear duct. So the tear duct would be like here and you can see that the nose inserts into the skull just above the tear duct. And that should have a really strong angle change, almost like a writing angle.

So there's a tendency actually to like curve this out and make it Yeah, just really curved. This line, I'll turn into the eyebrow a lot of the time, but you want to really there is a strong angle change there and make sure to capture that. And then you can break the planes into the front facing plane of the sort of bony ridge of the nose. There's a side facing plane and and also really important on the noses that there's this very important form shadow on the Bottom plane as the nose and a lot of the time with soft lighting, it's hard to really see that like in the nose is so rounded so the transition happens really softly. So it can be actually hard to perceive. But I promise it's there if the know if the lights are is is coming down on the model and definitely put that in put it in a little darker than you think you can wiggle across the edge, get it soft, and the nostril will hide within that and avoid doing don't do a nostril that's like a big circle pick nose.

Instead describe the lines of the nostril as like two angled straight lines sort of pulled down in the center to create the opening of the nose. And again that sits within the form shadow of the nose and then there's a cast shadow that comes down on the face off of the nose. And a lot of the time cast shadows are cooler and form shadows are warmer. Always check you can see with the lighting if that's true. And then the more fight like finished version of the nose. There's often going to be a highlight say the light source is coming weigh on the figure.

They'll often be a highlight running along that band in the plains where the side plane meets differently and a little specular highlight on the ball of the nose too. So looking at the three quarter nose, same considerations, get that strong angle change where the nose inserts into the skull. Get the bony front plane of the nose and the different tone for the side plane. Watch that the front plane of the nose is nice and narrow and bony. And construct the curves of the nose with angled straight lines. definitely get that form shadow on the nose, the lower plane of the nose all being slightly darker and get the nostrils defined with a nice warm color and two angled straight lines pulled down in the center.

And for the back nostril. The center line here is basically like this part. And then we sort of pull back and see some nostrils. Whole showing behind it. And then there's the cast shadow that comes down off the nose as well. And then the finished version, you'll put the highlight that runs down the bony plane where the front plane and the side plane meet, and the little specular highlight that occurs on the ball of the nose.

And then front facing those same considerations. Look for three tones for the side plane, front plane and other side plane. Always really get that form shadow on the lower plane of the nose. And describe the nostrils with two angled straight lines instead of a big circle pick nose and get the cast shadow coming down on the face as well. And then this illustration here just shows how the front facing nose is vertical. The three quarter nose shows some of the angle and the profile shows the full angle of the nose.

Also, if you go from the back wing of the nose and kind of follow it up at the same angle is the nose from a profile view. It takes you to the bottom of the eye. So there's a tendency in a To place the eye too far forward, but following this you'll get the eye anchored in in the right spot. So this is going to really help you as we move forward next and start to construct the features in our paintings.

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