Studying Anatomy from Historical Drawings: Heads (Patreon)

After a wonderful 8-week blog series from Shelley Morrow which focused on life drawing in a variety of different drawing media, we have a new 6-week series from Lancelot Richardson, looking at ways to use historical drawings to study anatomy. You will be able to resist these blogs any time by scrolling through our feed, or using the tags to separate out blog posts. 

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Working from historical artists' drawings and artwork is a time-tested way to improve our own drawing by learning from theirs. Good quality drawings show anatomy and structure, often in clearer and more concise way than photographs. Ina drawing the artist has already simplified the information from the figure, so that every mark has meaning. 

In this post the focus will be on the structure of the head and skull, as these play the most dominant roles in what we see. However, the face does have a fairly complex system of muscles that drive expression. Facial muscles are unusual as instead of attaching bone to bone, many attach bone to skin, pulling the face around. This is how wrinkles tend to form; the muscle pulling causes the skin to 'ruck up' like a curtain drawstring.

Main image: Giovanni Battista Piazetta – 'A Girl in Contemplation'

Structure of the Head and Neck

The gesture of the head is directed by the neck. This is important when drawing the figure, but conveying the dynamic between the head and neck makes for more interesting portraiture too.

John Singer Sargent – 'Portrait of Viscountess Ednam nee Lady Rosemary' On the right, I sketched over ideas about gesture. Gesture is a simplification of the overall pose.

The tilt of the head opposes the chest and shoulders, creating a sweeping s-curve. This is emphasised by the leading lines of the woman's top, which flow up to the neck, then change direction into the angle of the head. 

Find the angle of the head by checking the angles of the features; a line across the eyes shows a horizontal and the centre line of the face shows the vertical. Here, the angle of the eyes versus the shoulders inject asymmetry (and therefore interest) into the pose. The woman's head is also tilted, as shown by the centreline. Avoiding a straight vertical helps add a more active feel.

Finding ways to simplify the head is key to managing its complex structure, especially as we enter into more tonal work and painting. One approach is to interpret the head as having clear 'sides' like a cube. This clarifies the direction each 'surface' of the face is pointing in. The more directly they point at a light source, the lighter they are, whilst surfaces pointing away are in shadow.

Käthe Kollwitz – 'Two Studies of a Woman's Head'

This first interpretation shows a simplified structure of the head. Kollwitz' drawing shows clear angles for the top, front and side of the head, using a combination form and tonal decisions. If you look at the lines indicating wrinkles crossing the forehead, we can see they indicate the direction of this surface, sweeping up to the temple. The direction of the lines used to build tone changes as they wrap around the side of the head. A similar switch in mark direction happens in the mass of head on the top of the head.

Tone also helps us understand the planar structure of this drawing. The side of the face has fallen into shadow, whilst the front is in a half tone and the top of the head is most well lit.

Here is a more complex take on the structure of the head in planes, where the surfaces of the face are 'faceted'. This expands on the above simplification by helping us understand how the topology for the features is creating the light and shadow patterns we see. For instance, within the broad area of midtones of the front of the face, the eye sockets and chin area are turned further from the light, falling into shadow.

Anatomy of the Head: Skull

Understanding the skull is key to drawing a good head. Facial muscles animate expression, creating skin creases, but are still tiny compared to other muscles in the body. Therefore the skull is responsible for much of what we see.

Andrea del Sarto - 'Old man's head in profile to the right' Drawing the skull into head drawings is a good exercise for understanding how its structure affects the face we see.

1.  Much of mass of the head is made of the cranium, especially in this profile view - it is easy to underestimate it. Note how Andrea del Sarto has sculpted out the roundness with his wrapping lines.

2.  The eyeball is sunken into the eye socket of the skull, setting it back from the front of the nose. This causes the eye to fall into deep shadow. 

3.  This strong shadow edge around the eye socket shows how the edge of the orbit of the eye marks where the front and side planes of the head meet. This shadow edge continues above and below before softening when bone is covered with muscle and fat.

4.  The zygomatic bone – or cheek bone – continues the transition between the side and front planes. It wraps from the lower edge of the eye socket to the front of the ear. The front edge comes into shadow, angling downwards.

5.  This little budge behind the ear (the mastoid process) is just visible from its highlight. We can see how the sternocleidomastoid muscle of the neck attaches here.

Over to You: Head Studies from Historical Drawings

The drawings below have been selected as they show good examples of gesture and structure; however, you should try picking your own as well. When you draw from artists' drawings, resist the urge to create a tight copy, at least at first. Try to analyse them. 

This study of Valentin Serov's 'Portrait of Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski' examines how the skull and planar structures are expressed through the drawing. As I work, I am comparing a skull diagram (or in this case, my studio skull) to the drawing.

You may want to focus on gesture more for some drawings and structure for others. Take your drawings as far as you like, as long as you feel you are learning. Sometimes a gesture sketch is enough to understand the big ideas, and other times recreating the drawing can show you more about how anatomy affects the intricate details. Go with what feels appropriate and helpful.

If you want to study anatomy, keep a good quality skull reference to hand, be it in a book or an online one. Try to figure out how anatomical structures relate to what you see.

Greuze - Study for 'The Paralytic'. Head of an Old Man

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo – 'Head of a Man Foreshortened'

Adolf von Menzel - 'Woman with a Crushed Velvet Hat'

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This is the first  blog post in Lancelot's 'Studying anatomy from historical drawings' series, commissioned using money raised here on the Draw Patreon. 

Please do share your drawings with us, as we would love to see what everyone is up! Just tag us with @Draw_Brighton on social media or use the #LifeDrawingFromHome and #DrawBrighton hashtags. You can follow Lancelot on instagram here: @lancelotrichardson 

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