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Structural drawing
by Dan Thompson,
mixed media, 15 x 25, 2010. |
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Self-Portrait After Palmer
by Dan Thompson,
mixed media, 19 x 25, 2003. |
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I've taken notes from a lot of art instructors and sat in or
participated in plenty of drawing classes, but when I heard Dan Thompson talk
about the "great pyramid of the head," I was intrigued and knew that I wanted
to know more from him on how to draw people.
What I so appreciate about Thompson's approach is that he
believes in learning through many different practices. He doesn't perpetuate the
myth that there is one artistic tradition or way of study that opens up every
door for artists. Instead, he'll take an exercise like drawing people in a head
study as a chance to explain how to get there through many strategies.
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Thompson (demo drawing, above)
believes learning to draw people is all
about an interaction that you are
making together with the model. |
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For example, he starts to draw a person's head with anatomy
foremost in mind. He breaks down the anatomical landmarks of the head, from
skull and forehead to the neck, nose, eye, mouth and even the ear. In fact, the
ear is what Thompson calls the great anchor of a portrait because if it is
correctly rendered, the proportion and placement of the rest of the face's
features come together more easily.
Then drawing a person's head becomes a simplified value
massing exercise with five values, where the middle light is built with
hatchmarkings. Then onto viewing the head in terms of planes, which Thompson
helped me better understand as a bridge between two-dimensional and the
illusion of three-dimensional shapes. And finally, Thompson discusses the head
as a landscape of features, where the eyes are structural coins, the nose is a
lesson in triangles, and the mouth's structure is akin to a series of columns.
All this information really sunk in for me, and every bit of
the insight that I got came directly from Thompson's brand new DVD, Figure Drawing I: Anatomy of the Head.
Thompson's "all in" approach, his recommendations, and just hearing him talk so
articulately and sincerely about learning to draw people—calling it an
interaction that you are making together with the sitter—made
me more excited and less scared of the whole process. In Figure Drawing I: Anatomy of the Head, Thompson brings his
masterful instruction to all of us, and if you are like me, you'll watch it
repeatedly and get something new out of it every time. Enjoy!
