Drawing a Head 3rd May 2007

Drawing a Head v2 - 3rd May 2007
14" x 11, pencil on HP paper
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Two more drawings from my Drawing a Head class. I'm having problems uploading images using Blogger at the moment and these have been uploaded using Flickr - where you can also see a larger version - click the copyright line.

The top one took slightly more than half the time and was drawn using a pencil on HP paper. The second - at the end of the post - tries a new approach - it's a black, sepia and white ink drawing on blue grey paper. The idea was to mimic the colours frequently use in classical chalk drawings to see how it worked. Not bad for a first effort - but I think I could improve quite a bit. Don't ask me who makes the white pen I can't find a maker's name on it - but I do know it's gel ink. I think I maybe need to find something a bit more archival - just in case I do a good one! ;)

Drawing a Head v2 - 3rd May 2007
10" x 8", pen and black, sepia and white ink on blue/grey paper
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

An interesting link
Martin Kemp has written a very interesting article at the end of April about 'The Art of Physiognomy' for the Guardian Art and Architecture Blog. His article starts with comments about the way in which people who have committed atrocities get portrayed in the press. The notion that the eyes are a window on a soul and that we can read a person's character from the their face is ancient.

The tradition of western portraiture is founded on the assumption of what I have called the "physiognomic imperative". Physiognomics was the ancient science, first comprehensively outlined in a treatise attributed to Aristotle, that purported to read the "signs" of the face in the context of the human constitution of the four humours - sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric and melancholic (Professor Martin Kemp 'The Art of Physiognomy'.

It's a very interesting article and well worth a read by anybody interested in drawing people and portraiture.

Links:

• Guardian Unlimited: The Art and Architecture Blog

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