Portrait Drawing: Focus on Block-Ins

1. Introduction: Hey everyone. So in this class we're gonna be primarily focused on blockings. Now the reason I wanted to do this is really just to focus in on this one aspect of beginning a head drawing. Now oftentimes it's something that a lot of the students I've seen will try and rush through this part of the drawing, even though it kind of sets the stage towards the finish. So I'm gonna show you a bunch of different examples about how I like to approach my block ends, what I'm thinking about and some of the ideas and concepts that I use to kinda get me in the right direction. Ultimately, there are lots of ways you can approach this depending on the kind of drawing you're doing, or maybe you have a specific desired finished that you're after. But nonetheless, we always kinda wanna begin a drawing with a solid foundation. And so these are going to be some of the more academic ways that I've learned over the years and how I like to approach drawing. Initially, we'll begin with a couple of diagram type head drawings so that it can at least go over some of the concepts in a simplified manner. Now ultimately, these are just things that I use more or less on every drawing that I do. And what I'll say in a lot of the videos is that oftentimes I find that I may not use all the rules that I know to develop a drawing, but I'll use most of them, at least to get me initially started. Every drawing we do presents itself as a unique experience in a unique problem that we have to solve. But we can use a lot of these tools in order to help simplify some of that down so that it makes the drawing process a little bit easier. After the diagram demonstrations will actually go ahead and do two separate drawings of an actual person so you can see how the principles apply to a real face. Again, every drawing situation is different and there's multiple things like a person's type and whether it's male or female and there's other kinds of variables that will be a part of the drawing. But nonetheless, you'll see how I take a lot of the rules we discussed and apply them to an actual model so that you can see what that looks like. By the end of the drawing, our main goal is really to just have a nice clean line drawing that as well proportioned and is essentially ready to move on to the next stage of whether that's shading or modeling or what have you. But again, the emphasis is really going to be on structure and just creating the strongest beginning of a drawing that we can. 2. Block in approach: Getting started. I just wanted to talk about a general approach I take with my blockings. Just so you can see it in a very generic sense. Versus actually drawing from the reference. I'm essentially this is the approach I think about as I'm beginning any drawing. And even though I'm making this up out of my head, this is what I would essentially use for a finished drawing. Whether it's from life or from a piece of reference. With the starting shape. I'm essentially just trying to encapsulate everything from the get-go. I'm not starting off with like a sphere or an oval and then attaching a jaw or any sort of sort of multipart construction. Nothing. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that, but I prefer to just start with a larger shape. And then if I need to add or take away from it, I find that it's much easier to just begin with the totality of the shape that I want to work from and then go from there. Some people like to do more of a multi-part construction depending on the angle, it can be adding the skull itself, the actual general skull shape, and then attaching a jar and then a neck. And it's just, I find that it's just it's almost too much. I like to just start with a very general shape that will more or less try and capture the entirety of the head itself. I'll begin with essentially establishing a center line. And then from there I need to break down the rest of the face. Now, the general rule is that we can essentially break down the front plane of the face into thirds. Now, that's a very generic statement. And realistically, you'll find that most people deviate from that sort of general rule. But if you don't know where to go, then this is a good place to start. And then as you get a little bit further along and you start to measure a little bit closer, then you can find out where the deviations are. Now in terms of the thirds themselves. We're starting from the top of the hairline to the brow line, to the bottom of the nose, into the bottom of the chin. Again, the variation for most people is going to exist somewhere in there. So you may not necessarily have the equal thirds, but you can still make a subdivision of thirds in general and then slowly progress to fill the features in. Now with the third is in place. The next area I like to focus on is establishing the eye sockets. And the reason for this is that the eye sockets themselves or one of the larger shapes that we can work from. So I'd like to begin there and then gradually the work towards the smaller shapes. The important elements that I look for are essentially the spacing in-between the eyebrow so that I know roughly where the sockets are going to be in relationship to another. And then really I need to find out where the bottom of the socket is going to roughly end. It's not a bad idea to say that maybe that the end of the socket is gonna be about halfway through that middle third, but you'll always want to pay attention to the person you're drawing because every skull shape is going to be different. And so we're just trying to establish some general rules as I'm working here, but always, always defer to your model or your reference with the sockets in place. The next thing I want to separate is the side plane from the front plane of the face. Now, I'll look for this at the corner point in the eyebrow or in the brow line that we see here. And that'll essentially tell me where the separation is going to take place once I have the side plane and that gives me a clear indication about where the brow ridge itself is going to exist on that front plane because I can essentially build it off of the socket and then connect it from the side plane to across the forehead. With the brow ridge established. It allows me to find some of the smaller forums like the glabella in-between the eyes. But I can also start to separate the forehead out as well. Now, depending on the person and their type and just the general sense of their skull structure. The front plane of the forehead can be broken down in a number of ways. Now realistically to simplify things, I'm only going to really be looking for three major planes. Now, there's gonna be two side planes right here on the edges where the brow ridge is connecting. But there's also gonna be a front-facing frontal plane that we see. Now again, how extreme this becomes is going to vary from person to person quite greatly. And realistically, if this was a younger or a female model, I may not really inject some of that information. But if it was an older male or anything like that, it might be nice to have some of that information. More importantly, it's just important to know that these planes exist. And depending on the lighting situation, the planes might be more obvious or less obvious. Depending on how the light is set up on your model. While you can see some of these subdivisions here in the front and top part of the head. The one thing to keep in mind is that unless the model is either a bald or it has a shaved head, a lot of these elements are going to be covered by hair. So you don't necessarily have to think about them as much, but it does help to know that these planes are there. And depending on, again, the lighting situation, some are gonna be more obvious than others. Continuing through the front plane of the face, I'm gonna pull a line from the corner of the socket. And I'm going to estimate where the wings of the nostrils are going to end. And I'm essentially going to just take that to the nose. And that gives me a framework to build the nose into. Now in terms of the nose itself, I want to just think about for simple planes, we have two side planes, the front plane and a bottom plane. Now there are certainly smaller subdivisions, but in terms of getting started, always think of the larger masses first and then make smaller forums. Now there is a general rule from the interior tear ducts. You can pull a vertical line straight down to find the wing of the nostril. But I find that it varies quite a bit from person to person. So I don't have a tendency to follow that. I'd rather just from the tear duct you can still find an angle where the wing of the nostril ends and then base it purely off of that measurement rather than following a formula. Now the nice thing is from a front view, once you find the interior tear duct, you can carry a horizontal line over and find the outer tear duct. With those two in place, you can establish the ball of the eye. That's going to give you an indication about the general sizing of your eye socket as well. Now assuming your light source is coming from above, this is typically where you'll see the interior portion of the eye socket generally being covered in shadow. Now from the tear duct again, once we find the side plane where the wings of the nostrils are occupied, we can start to build out the rest of the nose. Now. While there's multiple planes of the nose to think about, again, once we establish the four basic planes, we can start dividing it into the wings of the nostrils, as well as the ball of the nose itself. Now, depending on the person's type, there's all kinds of different cartilage shapes that can take place within the nose itself. But I find that it's helpful to just think about the four basic planes to begin with and then slowly start to deviate depending on the person's type. Before we get too far ahead, it will be nice to establish just the general ears. Now the sort of token rule of thumb is that between the brow line and the bottom of the nose, within that middle third, we can roughly establish where the ears are going to sit. Now. The ears is being all cartilage. There's all kinds of variability. So keep that in mind in terms of the persons, let's say ear lobes or the shape of the top part of the ear, which is the helix. There's all kinds of variability. Now this is also assuming that we're looking perfectly straight on at the model. Now, if there's any degree of perspective or tilt or anything like that, then you'll have to adjust accordingly and then this rule doesn't necessarily work. So keep that in mind as you're working. But from a straight on view, we can generally say that within that middle third, our ear is going to essentially sit perfectly right in there. 3. Block in approach pt 2: With the nose in place, I can start building out the rest of the face, including the mouth as well as the cheekbones. Now, what I want to go ahead and do is I'm, even though I'm building off my center line, I wanna go ahead and establish where the corners of the mouth are because that's going to allow me to essentially frame the mouth. And then once the mouth is in place, I can more or less find the rest of the features. Now again, the general rule of thumb is that if from the vol of the eye, if we were to have an iris in the eye, we can pull a vertical line down and find the note of the mouth. However, the problem with that is that it's such a far distance to measure. So I like to often use the corners of the nostrils as a closer starting point to measure the angle of where the corners of the mouth are going to be. Now there's no reason that you couldn't use the iris to the node of the mouth as a measurement. But keep in mind that will only work essentially from a front view. So as soon as the head turns are and there's any sort of perspective, that kind of measurement really doesn't apply. Now the other nice thing about the corner of the mouth is that there's a rhythm from that corner to the top part of the helix that kind of creates this arc across the side plane and the front plane of the face. Now what this, what this is essentially establishing is the cheek plane. And the cheek is essentially going to exist as a top plane where it's gonna be most light facing Whereas in line with the features. And then essentially an aside and a bottom plane where it kinda comes down the side, where the cheekbone is down into the lower part of the jaw. Now, the nice thing about this is that it does essentially add a degree of dimension to the front and side plane of the face because it frames the entire front plane and separates it out from the side plane entirely. And then also, one thing to consider is that if we're working from a light source that's above, this is typically where you're going to see the highlight on that front plane of the cheek. And then it would typically drop off into shadow once it crosses that cheek plane down towards the lower part of the jaw. So by dividing the cheek that way again, it's, we're just separating the planes out so that if we think about how light is hitting these surfaces, there are certain planes like the forehead, the cheek plane, the nodes that if our light source is coming from above, those forms are more perpendicular to the light source. And those are where we're going to see our highlights hitting quite abruptly and then other forms that as they start deviating and turning away from the light, that's when we start going off into halftone and shadows. And while we're not necessarily dealing with tone, it is still important to think about your light source and what's happening even in a block in stage. So keep that in mind as you're working. As I start to build out the mouth, I essentially would start from the center point of the philtrum, which is just below the nose. Now the only reason I do this is that you can pull those lines directly from the philtrum all the way down into the chin. But it starts dividing the lips into smaller sections that you can build into. Now, depending on the person's lip type, there could be variations in the shapes themselves, but fundamentally they can all be squeezed in into this general shape. The more important part being is the degree at which the nodes of the mouth are in relationship to the nose because those essentially establish that top part of the muzzle shape of the mouth. You can see here how the top lip gets divided into two separate pieces, and then the lower lip gets divided into three separate planes. The nice part about building it out this way is that you can kind of break down this larger shape into much smaller sections. And I think it makes it a little bit more manageable to draw because you're no longer focused on all of these things going on at once. But you can simply work section by section. Now as we start getting to the chin area, there's a lot going on that we need to think about. Now I'm going to start with this little transitional plane that's below the lower lip because it'll help frame the ball of the chin. What ends up happening in this area, which becomes very important. And while it's a little hard to see from a front view, I'm going to show you what it looks like from the side so that you can better understand. But essentially what's happening this area is that we have a large amount of alternating forms or a stair-step effect that's happening in this area with the lips in conjunction with the ball of the chin. Now the way I like to think about it is if we're drawing from the side here and profile, if we think about the lips as they come together, the top lip essentially is going to be facing downward. The lower lip is going to be facing upwards. Then we're going to have the little plane just below the lower lip that's facing downwards. And then as we get to the ball of the chin, that top plane of it is going to be facing upwards. Now, this isn't necessarily important from the standpoint of a block in, but I feel like it's an important aspect of the structure because as you think about the mouth, the muzzle shape in general, this is what's happening to all of these forums in this area. Ultimately, I think it's more important when you get to modelling because then you need to be thinking about forms and how they orient in space. But nonetheless, I do think it's important to understand all of the little plane changes that are occurring in this very small area. So once we have that in though, we've now essentially establish the majority of the mouth and the chin in that general muzzle shape as they come together. Now, if we wanted to, the chin can actually be broken down into several more planes if we think about the ball and breaking it down into more of like a square or rectangular form. But that's going to be dependent on the model and the person you're drawing. So you may not always find yourself doing that, but it is something that you could do and create basically a top, a center and a bottom portion of the chin itself. Realistically through the lower part of the jaw and the mandible area, there's not a whole lot we really need to do. And while there's muscles that exist in that area, There's nothing in terms of form that we really have to consider too much. Now, you could, depending on the model, there is that little pocket in the cheekbone where if you squeeze your cheeks together or it's kinda suck them in, you get that little indention. And sometimes that can be prominent on a particular type. But in terms of the amount of information in the lower jaw, that's not the chin. There's not a whole lot you really have to factor in for those areas. So at this point we've more or less blocked in the entirety of the head. And as you can see, there's quite a bit of lines that are going on. Now one thing always say is that when you are doing your block and you always want to cater a lot of the construction lines to the specific model or reference that you're working from. So you may not necessarily need to draw all of these lines in there. As you can see, it gets a little chaotic and perhaps, maybe a little bit messy. That said, is if you do draw a light enough with your pencil, then you could very well have a lot of the construction lines in there. And so long as they're easy to erase as you draw over them, it may not be that big of a deal. I'll always say that you want to use the construction lines that are gonna be more beneficial to you as you're drawing. And there's really no reason to inject extra lines in there if you don't feel that they're going to be useful to you. So it's always one of those situational things where you want to use the best tools that are going to assist you and don't use the ones that won't. Now if you're just starting out, I would actually recommend doing a lot of drawings like this and not even worry about doing finishes or any sort of rendering. But really take your time to understand construction and structure so that you just get an idea of how to get a drawing started. Because ultimately, in my opinion, the block and is the most important part of the drawing in general. And as long as the structure is good, then finishing off a drawing is generally much easier, but the placement and proportions and just understanding how to construct from start to finish is going to be a much more important lesson than any sort of modeling at this point. So keep that in mind as you're working. And again, even just doing these as exercises and not necessarily as finished drawings, I find extremely beneficial. And then you can really take your time with the construction process. And then as you get better, it becomes more intuitive. Meaning you'll have to do less of these construction lines and you'll be able to move much faster as you go along. 4. Block in approach 3/4: So in starting a three-quarter portrait, a lot of the principles from a front view are still going to apply. The only thing we have to deal with is obviously the perspective. Now, the one difference is that there's multiple degrees of angle when we're talking about a three-quarter. So we always have to keep that in mind. Nonetheless, I still start with a large shape. And as I mentioned before in the front view, I don't like to start with multiple ball, a ball shape and then add the jaw. I still start with one large shape just so that I have something to work into. And what I'm trying to account for is the tip of the forehead, the bottom of the chin, and the back of the skull. And the reason I wanna do this is that oftentimes people forget the back part of the skull when they're drawing. So it's something I want to start with right away. But realistically, again, for me, it's about establishing a large shape. And if I can do that with one shape rather than multiple sort of construction shapes, then I'm gonna go ahead and do that so I can account for everything a little bit quicker. One thing to consider, at least for this example, is that because I don't have to deal with a hair shape or anything like that. I'm not including it, but depending on the model's hair type and things like that, That's something you may want to consider when you begin your initial shape, regardless of the perspective or the angle. But given that this is just a demonstration and I'm sort of making this up as I go along. I'm going to just start with the generic sort of head shape that I can work into. Once we have the large shape established, the next important thing is gonna be to place a center line. Now, given that it's a three-quarter, this becomes particularly important because wherever you place that center line is essentially telling us the angle and how much of one side we see versus the other. Now there's a lot of variability with a three-quarter pose because it could be a very moderate three-quarter where you're still seeing both sides of the face relatively well. And then you can have an extreme three-quarter where you really are not seeing a whole lot of the other side of the face, but it's not quite a profile. So you really want to think about that as you're getting the drawing, start asking yourself of k, like how much of the far I or the far cheek do I really see and just how extreme is that turn relative to what I'm, what you're seeing. And that's going to give you an idea about where to place the center line. And then once you have that established, then you can start breaking down the rest of the head. Now with the center line and I can start to break down the rest of the head. And I'm still going to start with my sort of generic thirds. So it's going to be from the hairline to the brow line to the bottom of the nose, bottom of the chin. Now again, I'll remind you is that on most people this is not going to necessarily be equal thirds. But if you're not quite sure where to start out and are maybe you're having a little bit of trouble figuring that out. That's at least something to start by. So there's always going to be differences from person to person, and might usually be one section of the thirds that is a little bit off for a little bit different and not equal, but it gives you a starting point. Now one thing to consider as you're putting in these axes lines is not only if we're dealing with a three-quarter, we have to factor that in. But if there's any sort of tilt in the head. So not only is the head turned away from us in a certain angle, but let's say if the model has some tilting their head, then we also need to be thinking about how these axes are tilting in space as well. So I'm just keeping this fairly simple by making everything straight on. But more often than not, depending on your reference and the model, there's a good chance there's gonna be some degree of tilt taking place and sometimes it's extreme and sometimes it's very subtle. So just keep that in mind. Now in breaking down the front plane of the face, I'm still gonna begin with the eye sockets. And really I'm going to want to key in on the spacing of the eyebrows and where that, how I see them. Because that's gonna be an indication about really the sense of three quarter that we're dealing with. And so I always want to be asking myself is how much of that far socket am I really seeing? That is sort of behind the nose? And so that's kinda what I want to get established here in the beginning. As well as the socket's being one of the larger features that I have to deal with in construction. But also then I can do, once I have the sockets in place, it's gonna be a lot easier to construct the rest of the features based off of that. Now, outside of that far socket, the other thing to keep in mind too, is in a three-quarter, you want to be asking yourself, is really how much of that far cheek are you seeing? Because that's also going to give you an indication of not only the turn, but then that'll also help you later on once we get to the mouth area and how much we're actually seeing the mouth protrude in front of that far cheek. So even though these things are going to vary from person to person, It's something to keep in mind as you're working because that's always going to give you an indication of just how far away the model is turned from you. Now, working from the corner point in the eyebrow, I'm gonna go ahead and extend that up to the front back of the skull because that's going to give me an indication about the side plane of the head itself. So that line essentially bisects the corner of the eye socket here. And you can essentially carry that all the way down to the chin if you wanted to. But for now I really just want to separate out the front plane of the forehead area so I can build that brow ridge. So hopefully you can see just by adding the side plane and a few other indications, we get a better sense of dimension in the three-quarters thus far. Now the other thing to consider as we're building out the drawing is that we initially started with a center line to tell us the relative direction of the three-quarter. However, as we build out the drawing farther, we want to start thinking about the actual contour of what's happening. And so you can see as I'm putting in a center line here that's following the brow ridge, the front plane of the forehead, and then back towards the skull. We want to be thinking about this as we start building the rest of the features. So as we get down to the nose and especially down in the mouth area, thinking about how the contours happening across the front plane of the head is going to be very important. As I continued to work down the front plane of the phase, want to start establishing more of the features. Now I'm just trying to find a relative tear duct based on the shape of my eye sockets. Now obviously you would use this and make those measurements based off your model that you're working from. But nonetheless, I would want to find the tear duct relative to the ring of the nostrils so I can establish the rest of the shape of the nose. Now I'm not thinking about the planes just yet, but I'm just want to find a general location so I know exactly what I'm building into. Once I have a rough idea about the placement of the nose, I can start breaking it down into simpler planes. I still want to think about just the general front side and bottom plane. Now, the nice thing about a three-quarter is that we don't really have to worry about matching. Both nostrils are both side planes. We're really only dealing with three planes fundamentally. Now, ultimately the nose can be broken down into much more complex shapes. And there's lots of sub planes that we can think about. But in the initial block and I really just want to find the very largest planes I can find so that I have a good sense of the shape. Now again, the other thing to consider with the nose in a three-quarter is whether or not the nose is actually passing in front of the far cheek or not. Because again, that's an indication of how much the model is turned away from you. And sometimes in certain poses you'll find that the nose is actually extending past the FAR portion of the cheek. And then what ends up happening is, is that sometimes the mouth or the muzzle shape could actually extend farther. Now this is always a case-by-case scenario, but it's something to keep in mind as you're working and you want to pay attention to all of these forms and how you see them in relationship to the perspective that you're dealing with. As I find the corners of the mouth, what I really want to focus on is just the overall muzzle shape of the mouth and what sort of space that occupies in the front plane of the face here. And again, depending on the model and the angle of three-quarter that you're dealing with. Sometimes you'll actually get a good sense of just how far the muzzle will actually stick out on the front plane of the face. So that's something that you really want to pay attention to. Because ultimately what's important is, is we want to see the sense of overlapping forms in relationship between the far side of the socket, the cheek, the muzzle, and then the chin. 5. Head construction 3/4 pt 2: As we make our way down to the mouth area, this particular portion of the head I feel is very important. And it's for a couple of reasons. And the things you want to be thinking about is not only the angle of three-quarter, but again, the important thing to really pay attention to is the degree at which you see these overlapping forms in the pose itself. So e.g. we need to be able to see how the eye socket kind of tucks in. And then we get the cheek as it's wrapping around the eye socket. And then as the cheek comes down, depending on what the mouth is doing, we may get the muzzle shape of the mouth extend beyond the cheek. And then as the muscle attaches to the chin, that's another form where we're going to see some overlap. And so depending on the model or your reference that you're drawing from, these particular forms are really important to pay attention to. Because in order to get the sense of form that we want, we really need to make sure that these overlaps are really happening in the correct areas so that we get a sense of one form coming in front or behind another. Now, just so I don't get caught up in one area for too long. I want to go ahead and build out the rest of the head. Now because there's no tilt in the head, it's very straight on. I can essentially again go from the brow line and the bottom of the nose in that middle third, and extend those lines outward so that I know the relative placement of where the ear is going to sit. Now one thing to keep in mind with the IRR is that it's going to be always pitched at an angle. It's not going to be straight up and down. So as you're constructing it, you want to make sure that you're finding that angle that the ear is sitting on and make sure that it's not completely vertical. Once the ears established, we can connect the rest of the jaw to the chin area that we've already established. And again, depending on the person's type, they may have a strong corner point in the jaw, they may not. So it's something to pay attention to as you're working from your reference or your model. One other small thing to keep in mind too, is even though from a straight on view in a head is you still may see some of the underside of the jaw. So keep that in mind as you're working and it really will vary from person to person, but it's very possible that you may see some of that. Now here we mostly have the majority of the head established, but I want to start breaking it down even farther. I'm pulling a rhythm line from the corner of the mouth to the top of the ear. So that establishes a cheek plane. And really why this is important is that if we're working from a well-lit model and let's just say the light source is coming from above. Typically, we're going to have that front-facing cheek plane is that's going to be hit by light. And then that's typically where we see that highlight on a cheek is where it comes to an angle. But more importantly is I want to separate the front part of the cheek from the side part of the cheek as it goes further down into the lower part of the jaw. That way I have a very distinct separation. So in building out the I want to go ahead and establish just a little bit more in the interior of the socket. Now one thing I like to do when I'm constructing the eye is to actually build out a little bit of the eyebrow first, only because I can use that as a measuring tool so I know exactly where I'm going to place the eye. Typically if our light source is coming from above, the interior portion of the socket is going to be heavy in shadow. So that's something to keep in mind. But more importantly, what I like to use that portion of the eye socket is really just to gauge the relative space between the socket and the upper lid and the ball of the eye as well. Now the one tricky part with a three-quarter is depending on, again, how far turned the model is turned away from you. The far I is gonna be obscured, are covered in some degree by the nose. So you may not really find a tear duct to build off of. So you want to use the eyebrow and the socket as a guide to construct that. I, the important part of the far side, I is really going to be getting that sense of overlap in the lids as they're wrapping around the ball of the eye. And depending on the model and how much you're actually seeing, you may see more or less depending on their lid type. Now one thing to keep in mind is that the upper lid is gonna be a little bit more telling in terms of how it's wrapping around the ball of the eye as the upper lid tends to be a lot larger than the lower lid. This is going to be a case of like we were talking about before with the cheekbone and the muzzle shape of the mouth. Now, dealing with the eyes, we really just want to get the sense of overlap in those forums as things are wrapping around the ball of the eye. And then the eye socket itself is wrapping around it as well. And it just becomes a lot of managing these forms and trying to get that sense of one thing coming in front of another. And working on the nose because we don't have to worry about matching both sides of the nostrils or anything like that. We can really just focus on the ball shape of the front part of the nose and how it comes into contact with the wing of the nostril as well as the bottom plane. Now, depending on your model and how much cartilage shape they have and their nose, you can start breaking it down into smaller sub planes, but you really just want to basically take that large mass of the nose and just gradually break it into smaller sections. This will vary quite a bit from person to person. So it just kinda, sometimes it's helpful to just work one plane at a time and then gradually just bridge all of them together. Now the nice part is again, depending on your light source and whatnot. Sometimes you're going to have just a heavy cast shadow coming from the nose. So it may obscure some of that bottom plane of the nose quite a bit, as well as some of the wing of the nostril. It really just depends on your light source and the models orientation. As I work on the lips here, you want to make sure that if you haven't established a new center line for the muzzle, you want to go ahead and put that in first because I'm going to build the lips off of that new center line. And the reason for this really is so that we keep the mouth in perspective. If I were to draw the lips on the original center line that I started with, they would be completely out of perspective with the rest of the face. So you really want to make sure that as you build out the initial muscle shape, that you build a brand new center line that's in perspective with the rest of the features. One thing to also keep in mind as you're working on the mouth is that you may not see both nodes of the mouth depending on the perspective you're drawing from. The three-quarter is so extreme where you're only seeing one node of the mouth, then it's gonna be more important to think about how the top and bottom lips come together because you're going to see a greater degree of overlap in those forums. Now just like the mouth, the chin itself will also have its own unique center line. And from that center line, if you wanted to break the chin down into several planes, you could. But for the most part I would say with the chin is you really just want to make sure that it's kind of feeling connected to the muzzle shape of the mouth as those two forms interact with one another. It was a male type. You can chisel out the chin and give it a much stronger look. But if it's more of like a younger person or a female, you may not want to carve out the chin as much so that it appears a little bit more delicate. I know we really didn't go into anatomy or anything like that too heavy. And I feel like if you're just starting out the more important aspect of the block and is really just the general structure. And seeing the big planes of the head and how these forms interact with each other. You can always take your time afterwards to really focus individually on the features and the anatomy. And even perhaps focus on just drawing skulls and things like that. But hopefully this made sense in terms of a block in and that all of these principles you can apply to your drawing as you get started. Now, as you can see, there's obviously a ton of construction lines that we're dealing with. And realistically, you wouldn't necessarily use all of these as you work on your drawing. You would always want to try and find the most obvious things that you see. But hopefully this helps you see the thought process that I'm going through as I'm thinking about breaking down the head and all of these different sections. Now it certainly doesn't hurt to do drawings like this where it's purely just sort of overkill with the construction lines. And realistically, if you draw the lines light enough, you can always take them out and then move on to taking the drawing farther. But even just as a practice exercise, if you're just doing sketches and you're not really focused on finishing a drawing or anything like that. Then oftentimes I do find that it is beneficial to do just these really structure-based drawings. Just so that you can take yourself through the process and really start to see how all of these things come together when you begin your block in. 6. Beginning the block in : So as we begin the drawing, I just want to start with a large shape. That way I know exactly where this is going to sit on my page. I'm not really aiming for any accuracy or any specific angles really at this point, I just want to get a large mass established so that I know roughly where this drawing is going to sit on the paper. How much open space is going to be around the head. And then kind of go from there. These early sort of mark making in the drawing. Not that important. I really just want to get something on the paper so that I have something to compare, something to look at. The longer we keep the page blank, the harder it is to start a drawing. So it's really just a matter of giving yourself something to go off of and then you can start making better decisions. Now this doesn't mean I just want to draw any shape. I do want to keep in mind the general angles about the outside portion of the head itself. So I'm looking for angles and the hair. And early on what I like to establish is we want to find an outside shape, which is gonna be the hair mass, maybe the neck, maybe the shoulders, depending on how much of the portrait you're drawing. If it's just a head or a three-quarter portrait. There's some variables to think about, but really what it is is I think of the portrait as the outside silhouette and the interior silhouette. So how is the hair framing the actual face, the skull itself, and then the outside portion of the hair. So those are the two things that I focus on. The very first few minutes of any drawing or portrait I should say, is finding an interior shape and an exterior shape. And then start to make better decisions and start finding measurements off of that. Now it's with these two things that depending on the complexity of the person, let's say their hair type or anything like that. You could very well spend a good amount of time just trying to resolve those two things. But if you can at least get a good sense of the shapes that you're working with. Wood, that exterior silhouette and interior silhouette, then you have a much better chance, I think in the long run of getting a better likeness as you take the drawing forward. So I would really spend a good amount of time establishing these shapes right from the very start so that at least you set yourself in a very positive direction for the rest of the drawing. Once I feel okay about those shapes, ice want to start dividing out the actual head into some subdivisions. The most important for this particular portrait because it is straight on as I want to find a center line of some kind and noting what this particular portrait is, that she's just slightly off center. So even though she's looking at us, there is a little bit of a head tilt that I need to account for. So that's something that we want to establish right away so that we don't lose it or risk losing it as we take the drawing forward. It's in these early stages of the drawing where we really want to find all the necessary tilts or different if there's a change in axes from, let's say, a brow line where the nose is placed, the mouth or anything like that. It is something that I want to establish very early on in the drawing so that I'm sort of mentally making a note for myself that okay, I may need to pay attention as I start flushing out other details like eye sockets or the nose or the mouth itself or anything like that. It needs to be built upon a framework. So that beginning framework is going to start with an axes line of some kind, whether that's horizontal or vertical or what have you. These are all things that I want to be accounting for as early as possible once I have a large shape established. Now that I have a simple shape established on the page, what I want to start thinking about are my height to width relationships in the face itself. So I want to start thinking about, okay, how much hair on one side do I see versus the other? What's the width of the face versus the overall height of the face? Finding these different measurements and taking my time to check myself. This is all about trying to be accurate and trying to maintain the models sense of proportion. So there's so many variables when you're doing a portrait that it can get overwhelming to try and think about everything at once. So I try and work in stages so that I'm focusing on one thing at a time. And now that I have a rough, simple shape on the page, I have a center line to go off of. I can start taking these other measurements and focus just on those before I start moving forward. Now as I'm continuing to find height to width relationships, you can see that all of my lines right now are still very angular and straight. And the reason for that is that every time I connect two lines together, it's creating a point. With those points. I can use those as a guide. Essentially, as I see one angle meet with another angle, I have all of these little axes points that I can use to measure across, let's say the top to the bottom of the face, or just from one section to the other. That's the primary reason for working in a lot of straight lines and not using curved lines is that with a curved line, we have nothing to measure off of because there's no apex of any kind. So as I kinda build with these straight lines in construction, I can always use the points to help myself measure from one distance to another and making sure that all of the angles that I'm putting down are sort of in the right place and at the right angle to what I see on the model. Now, it will make the drawing look very rigid and structural at first. And that's okay because it's one of those things that I know as I begin to model the drawing, if we were to go that route, than all of those angles will naturally soften as we begin the modeling stages. But early on in the construction portion, I really just want to have this nice, very sort of almost rigid drawing in the sense that I can use all of these points to help myself measure and you use them as a guide. Now one thing I will say is that even though we're taking a lot of time here to measure and be accurate, I know deep down that there's probably going to be some things that I miss as I'm going along through the drawing and that's okay. My eye is far from perfect. And I'm going to make mistakes. And I'm going to miss something and I measure something inaccurately or anything like that. And I'm totally okay with that realistically because I'm just drawing in line. If something needs to come out, I'll take it out. But what I would say that is is that don't feel like you need to get everything absolutely right the first time. There's sometimes there's things in the drawing that you won't catch till after you've put in several bits of information that you'd never want to feel like you can't go back and change something. So I'm going to try and be as accurate as I can the first time, but I know that there's very likely thing, little things that I'm going to miss. So just be patient with yourself. Give yourself the time to continue on with the drawing and know that you're going to probably have to make some corrections as you get further along because there's very likely things that you miss and that's just part of the process. So keep that in mind. But so far with what we've established, you can see we have a nice simple shape that is slowly starting to form into the model itself. And obviously we still have a long way to go in terms of placing the features and things like that. But we have a nice simple shape for now that I feel pretty good about in terms of proportion and angle and where it's placed on the paper and for the first hour or so in the drawing, I think that's a good place to be. 7. Continuing the Block in : So with the general shape established, my next thing that I want to at least get in for now is the axis lines. Now keeping consistent with the tilt of the center axes. I also want to make sure that I'm also keeping my horizontal axes in relationship to those. Now, given that there is a slight tilt, one thing to consider is that even though the hairline at the very top is on a different axes because of how her hair is kinda coming down the head. I'm gonna be primarily focused on the brow line, the bottom of the nose because I already have the hairline and the chin established and those themselves create their own kind of axes. Now a very common starting point when breaking down the axis lines in relationship to the front plane of the face is essentially dividing it into thirds. And this is a very sort of Andrew Loomis style approach of constructing the head. Now, there's certainly nothing wrong with that. And it's a maybe a good starting point. But you'll find that on a lot of people that It's sort of a generic starting points. So you wanna be a little bit more mindful about the different sort of proportions. So keeping in mind from the hairline to the brow line, brow line to the bottom of the nose, the bottom of the nose to the chin. Those are sort of like your generic starting points, which you want to look for in every person or every model that you draw as you want to find where they slightly deviate. Because it's very seldom that you'll find someone that is perfectly equal thirds. There's always gonna be somewhere where it's a little bit different. And this could also be in relationship to just how someone's hair, it's coming down their face. And that can throw off that measurement. So something to be mindful and something that just look out for. Now. If you just need a starting point, then go ahead and make those equal divisions. But really you want to focus in on where those differences are so that you can really try and capture the person you are drawing. If anything, always think of it as just a starting point. And then as you start adding information, you can make subtle changes to these proportions. But again, initially in this stage because we're just starting the drawing, it's okay to make some generalizations just to move forward and put some information in. But as soon as we start seeing things where maybe we need to make some adjustments. It's something that we want to be mindful of and just keeping the back of your head so that we're not getting to in a sort of a formula of drawing heads because we want to try and avoid that if we can, so that we're being a little bit more accurate to our subject matter. Now with the axis lines established, I want to continue to break this down a little bit further. For me logically, that's going to be the eye sockets. And I'll start off with my center line. Find two little points in relationship of where the eyebrows are going to be placed. And then I will essentially we'll just build my sockets out of that. Now. The one thing I need to keep in mind is the eye sockets themselves are probably the next largest shape that I'm putting in here. So they are going to occupy a good amount of space on the head itself. More so because we're looking at her straight on, I don't have too much perspective. So one thing I'm also going to be keeping in mind is as I'm building this out, there are elements of symmetry that I'm going to have to be looking for. And it's not to say that I do see some asymmetry in some of the features, but in just getting started with placement and things like that, because of the angle I'm working from, I want to make sure that I'm at least capturing a good balance between left and right and making sure that things are aligned and nothing is looking to off. Now as far as blocking in the sockets themselves, I tend to stick with a generic sunglass shape. Because the reason I want to build them that way as I want to sort of encapsulate the ball of the eye in the entirety of the socket itself. So I want to establish the entirety of that socket and I'm trying to think about the skull underneath as I'm building that out. So the sockets can't be too small. We have to have enough room to place the entirety of the eye. I need to make sure there is room for the interior portion of like where the tear ducts are being occupied. So all of these little things, I want to just establish a large shape. So it ends up looking like a pair of sunglasses. And it's really just enough for me to have enough room so that I feel comfortable as I start to construct the rest of the eye later on. With the sockets built out. Now essentially I can just start breaking things down a little bit farther. Now in this case, what I like to do is at least find the tear ducts. And for this particular pose, because she's facing us, it'll be nice to basically make direct comparisons from side-to-side. Now, if this were a three-quarter, you obviously couldn't do that because we're not really seeing both sides of the face. But in this particular instance, because I can see both sides equally, for the most part, I can make relationships right across that whole front plane of the face. And so as I find one tear duct, I can see where that is in relationship to another. Then essentially carry it over to the other side of the face. And I'm essentially going to be doing this for the majority of this portrait only because of the angle it allows me to make these direct relationships. But nonetheless, if if I were drawing a three-quarter, I would still maybe start with the eye sockets, the tear duct, and then slowly work my way down the portrait. But in this case because of the angle, it allows me to just make direct relationship comparisons from side-to-side. And I'll build out the rest of the drawing that way. So with the tear ducts established in the sockets at it now allows me to start working my way down the rest of the portraits. So I'm not necessarily worried about drawing in the eyes or anything like that. I still want to establish the rest of the features in a very basic sense. What I'm doing here is I'm taking from the tear duct all the way down to the outer edges of the wings, of the nostrils. And the only reason I'm doing that is I want to think about the entirety of the nose. So even though we can break the nose further into separate planes, I want to think about the entirety of the shape and the space that it's occupying on the front plane of the face. Once we have the large shape of the nose established, then I can start breaking it down into subdivisions. So I want to be thinking about the bridge of the nose as it works its way down to the ball of the nose. And realistically, because I've already established the outer edges of the nose itself, I don't necessarily have to think about the side planes as much because that shape that I established from the very beginning here almost automatically built the side planes. So all I'm really focusing in on her is gonna be the bridge of the nose itself and then the ball of the nose as it connects to like, let's say the rest of the nostrils. Now the one interesting thing about her is that she has a very interesting knows type in the sense where I do see bits of cartilage that are established around the wings of the nostrils into the side planes. And that's a cool little effect that'll maybe dabble or try and separate later on. But for now, I just want to find the largest shapes to work with. And then as we get more information in the rest of the portion, we can start focusing in on those smaller shapes that are unique to her. 8. Building the features: As I keep adding information to the features, I want to go ahead and still check myself and make sure that things are lining up the way they should. So in this particular instance, I want to make sure that the outer edge of the eye socket and its relationship to the wing of the nostril. And this sort of triangular effect that I'm seeing from the eye sockets to the nose. What does that look like? Are things lining up properly? And so these are all like kind of as you go along and you start adding bits of information. These are just different ways to keep checking yourself to make sure that things are lining up the way that you see them. And if something is off, this is the sort of the time and the drawing where you want to change it now in this early stage of construction so that as you go forward and you start adding more detail and more information and things like that. And you don't want to have to go back in and make big adjustments. So if I continue along with the drawing as it is now and I see something that's maybe off a little bit off or anything like that. I want to go ahead and try and resolve that as best I can so that I don't have to go back to it later. Now to find the mouth, I'm going to just take an angle from the corner of the nose and then find the corner or the node of the mouth. And then once I find one, I can essentially carry that over across and then find the other side, making sure that everything is still in the line and on its axes with everything else I've established and thus far. Now, the nice part is, is that as we're kind of getting the majority of the features placed is now that I have the mouth points in there, I can start comparing the lower half of the face to the upper half of the face and make sure that things are still lining up the way they need to. Now the nice thing too with the corner of the mouth is that we can pull these rhythms here and which help establish the cheeks. And realistically what I'm thinking about is the cheekbones underneath the skin itself and how that is established. And realistically you can also use the shadow patterns, even though we're not really doing a tonal drawing per se, you can use shadow patterns as a guide to help you find some of that underlying structure. But because I'm just dealing with line here, I'm just putting in these rhythms from the corner of the mouth into the cheeks just so I know where things are. So with the two points of the mouth established, I can start to fill in the mouth. But I also want to be thinking about the entire muscle shape that this sort of space occupies. So it's not just the lips themselves, but it's also what's below the lips. And then that includes the chin and some of the anatomical nuance that is connected to that area. Now, I'm still going to start with the lips because then I can kind of build off that area with the top lip. I want to just keep it fairly simplified. That sort of bow shape that we're used to seeing in that kind of fits her type. There's some, there's some subtlety that we'll get back to. But for the most part, just to get to established, I'm going to keep the lips, the generic shape for now. So as I work in this area, even though I'm establishing the lips themselves, I always want to be thinking about the surrounding areas as well. So once I get the top lip established, I want to be thinking about how that relates to the lower lip. And then there's always that little tiny gap below the lower lip before it reaches the chin. And there's this stair-step effect that takes place as well. And while we don't really see that so much in a front view, it's much more obvious in a profile or a three-quarter, and it can vary quite greatly depending on the person and their type. But I'm just trying to keep that in mind as I'm working here that I know that these little spaces have to exist. So putting the lower lip in, I'm thinking about just that space it occupies as well as the surrounding area and how it connects to the gel around the mouth, and then how that interlocks with the rest of the chin. Now one thing to keep in mind is depending on the person's type. Sometimes the chin can be a little bit on the rounder side. On a male, it might be a little bit more square and blocky. And depending on the person's type, you can add additional planes here if you see fit. And maybe on a male that might make sense to add additional transition planes in the area of the chin, but on her It's not overly prominent. So. I want to just keep it really soft and symbol. And I think in general, when drawing a female, it's probably best to keep it that way so that it's not overstated. So with all the features roughly placed, I can start really focusing in on not necessarily details, but I can start breaking things down into smaller, more defined shapes. Now, in this particular instance, I do want to better establish the exterior silhouette again. And then the only area I've really kind of neglected is kinda putting in the eyes themselves. So even though I've established the sockets, I still have to go in and place the eyes. And I think one of the reasons I have a tendency to save it for the last bit of information is that there's a lot going, a lot of information that's going on in the eyes themselves. So outside of the sockets, There's things we have to factor in such as the lids, how they wrap around the ball of the eye, and there's a lot of other things at play. So I find for me, drawing eyes are a little bit more difficult, so I have a tendency to hold off and attack them lasts I can put all my energy into it, but before I get to that, we'll go ahead and just clean up some of the drawing, kind of refine some of the outer silhouette here and then get to the eyes. Now, you could certainly approach it differently in the sense that you could very well attack the eyes straight on it. And it's really just a preference thing on my end. Ultimately, they have to go in any way. So it doesn't matter if you get to him first or you get to them last, but just for me as I like to establish everything else first and then work my way back up and then spend the extra time making sure that I resolve the eyes as best I can. And so for me, what I usually end up doing first is just better establishing the eyebrow itself. And in this particular instance, on this left eye here there's a lot of shadow shapes going on. So I'm going to really lock onto the shadow shapes first and use that to help me construct the rest of the eye. Now, this could be very different depending on the lighting situation and things like that. And I'm not necessarily going to fill in any shadow, but I do want to use those shapes as a way of helping the place and construct the eye. So that's something to keep in mind as you're working, is that even though we're not dealing with tone, it doesn't mean we can't use the shadow shapes as a tool to help us construct portions of the drawing. You'll see here is that as I'm working, I'm essentially constructing around the eye itself. So I'm not really focused too focused on the lids or the eyeball itself or anything like that as I'm just kinda focusing on the areas around it and I'm circling around so that as I add information to the interior socket, the exterior portion of the socket, I'm kinda just slowly inching forward to the eye itself and eventually start adding the lids and things like that. But I kinda just approach it one little section at a time so that, that way I don't get too overwhelmed with all the details that are going on. 9. Continuing the features: So as I continue along with the eye here, I'm just going to be drawing in small little sections at a time. And realistically, what I'm looking for in this particular eye is actually just looking at dark against light shapes because this eye is so heavily in shadow that I don't want to oversee or put in excessive detail for a block in that detail might come at this, we're going to be a finished drawing and I was modeling it. And then I want to see that detail that might be something to consider, but given that this is a block in, I don't want to overstate anything. I just want to find the absolute necessity in terms of the information that's going to drive the drawing forward. So in this particular instance, because this eye is so heavy and shadow, I'm going to actually just draw the shadow shapes in because it's really going to help establish the eye a little bit faster. And I think the big effect is going to be stronger by having those shadow shapes in there. Now ultimately, this is going to depend on your model or your reference that you're using and what the lighting situation is going to be like. But if it means that you have to establish some of the shadow shapes a little bit earlier than you need to, just to help you resolve an area or find information or help you block in better, then go ahead and do that. I'm not really against prematurely putting certain things in if it's going to help you. But again, it's all situation dependent. So it really depends on your lighting scenario. And if you're dealing with a direct light source like this and you have heavy shadow shapes. Sometimes it can be beneficial, which is why I'm going and just drawing in the shadow across the cheek, down into the chin. It all kinda, it's this large shape. It'll help create the light effect that even though I'm not dealing with tone, having those shapes in there kinda help you measure against other things. So it's one of those things where you have to just pick and choose what information is going to help you. And in this case, to resolve some of these areas, drawing in some of the shadow shapes is going to be beneficial for me. Same thing for the nose as I did with the eye is at, to help construct this a little bit further, I'm going to use those shadow shapes to my advantage. And part of this area, even though she has a very specific knows type, I'm going to see more of that perhaps on the light side versus the shadow side, which is going to just kind of, it's all going to connect to this cast shadow that's coming off of the nose itself. So this side of the face, I can simplify this area. And I don't want to overstate too much information. Once I get over to the light side of the nose, there might be little extra things that I may want to put in that are more specific to her nose type. But for the shadow side, I can simplify it down so that it doesn't become overworked. But also to the way I think of something that's in shadows. I don't want to draw too much attention to that area. I want to kinda keep that shadow shape large and simplified so that it reads very strongly as a shadow. Now one thing I'll say is that as you're working and you perhaps start mapping out some of these shadows. If you're having a difficult time making out what's supposed to be in shadow and what's supposed to be in light, especially in small areas, e.g. like the nose or the mouth or the eye. Then what I would suggest is put in just a very, very light bit of tone, just so that you can visually separate lightened dark. Don't want to go overboard with it because if you do need to make corrections and you have to take something out, then if you have a heavy tonal area, it becomes a bit more difficult. But if during the block M process, you come into areas where maybe things are getting really close together or there's lots of information in a very specific area that's maybe hard to make out. Put in a little bit of tone for yourself that way you can differentiate a little bit easier and then that way that can help you with the construction process as you move forward. Now as I work down towards the mouth, I know she kinda has a lot of little shapes going on in the lower lip in around this shadow side. Now, in this particular instance, I'm gonna go ahead and actually try and find all of those little bits of information just so that I have a very clear notation of what's going on. So I do see a little bit of the lower lip separate from the flesh area. And then there's a little bit of this kind of small little shadow shapes that I'm seeing in. As much as I'm going to simplify them down, I do want to make a mental note about all these little things that are going on over here. Because ultimately, if the drawing work to progress further, it's something that I need to make sure that I'm accounting for. Now. It doesn't mean I'm wanna get carried away and just put in every little thing that I'm seeing. But if there are things that when I squint down, they still stand out, that means that the shape is relevant enough to where I need to account for it. So as you're moving forward in your drawing, one question I would be asking myself is that when I squint down to try and simplify certain areas, if they still stick out to me, maybe I should go ahead and include them in my block in. Again, that's going to be something that varies from drawing the drawing and the lighting scenario. And there's a lot of other factors at play. But in this particular instance, some of these smaller shapes that I'm seeing around the mouth area really stand out to me and whether or not they would get fully fleshed out in the Finnish might be another thing, but for the sake of a block in, I'm gonna go ahead and put them in. So as I work over to this other eye, I'm gonna have to be a little bit more careful only because I don t have shadows to really lock onto in this area and this I is fully out in the light. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna just trying to relate things from side-to-side to the other eye that I've drawn just to make sure that my alignment between the lids and the iris and everything like that. Everything is looking like the eyes are a unit. So I don't want the hard part sometimes about drawing straight on as you have to match eyes. And that's just one of the more difficult aspects of drawing a straight on portrait. So especially with an I that's fully out in the light like this with no shadows to lock onto. I just have to slow down and be a little bit more careful. In this particular instance, I just need to make sure that the lids are staying in line with each other. The gaze is staying in line with the other eye. And then really after that, then it's just a matter of drawing the lower lid and making sure that everything is on the same axes. And that's one thing that we talked about at the very beginning is when we're dealing with straight on, then that really doesn't matter regardless, even if it's three-quarter profile, is that all your axes have to stay in line with each other so that nothing goes off kilter. So that's just something I'm really trying to pay attention to as I'm drawing these other aspects of the features is making sure that all of the axes are staying in line as I draw them. And then any other things that stand out like if I see a halftone shape or anything that maybe I can emphasize it a little bit just to help me lock the eye into the socket a little bit better. Or even I may draw like if there's a very specific highlight shape or anything like that that I see, I may go and actually draw in that highlight shapes so that I have something to latch onto in the light side. So as we keep moving forward, we're getting to a point where we have the majority of the information in the drawing. And then what we kinda just get to a point where we have to start refining and perhaps we start getting more specific with some of the shapes right now or still in a somewhat generic block in the sense where we have everything there. But we haven't been overly specific just yet. So I'm just trying to keep that in mind as I continue to push forward here. But we're almost to that point where we have what we need and things are kind of looking all right. Everything is in line with each other and I feel good about the construction, but now we just need to take it further and start to develop it a little bit more. 10. Drawing hair and refining: With everything in place right now at this point in the block. And it really is just gonna be a matter of finishing up things like the hair, the neck, and then just cleaning up and reassessing everything that I have before moving forward. Now, you can see there's obviously a lot of construction lines still. There's a lot of things that I've left in and it's really more so for demonstration purposes. But if you find that as you're working, if some of these excess lines become a little bit too hard to manage or you're having a hard time seeing what is supposed to be what, then go ahead and either start removing some of those initial construction lines or take out any extra information that is no longer benefiting you. It really will vary from drawing to drawing, but I know sometimes a lot of these lines can get overwhelming. So you want to just try and do your best. That's going to serve the drawing in the end. If you need to take certain things out, go ahead and do so. Now in terms of her hair itself, it's gonna be like I see the way I see it as it's like a 5050 thing and that the left side of the hair is very calm and there's a lot of shadow. So I don't wanna get too complicated with that shape. I want to keep it simple. Whereas the right side of the hair has a lot of extra curls in some shapes that are going on that gives it a little bit more interest. So the way I'm thinking of it is that there's very much a passive side which is simpler and more calm. Then there's an active side where I have some extra information that might be cool to put in just so that there's a little bit going on in the hair that gives it some interests, but nothing too crazy. That's going to take away from the face. Even though it looks like there's a lot going on in the hair on this side. I still want to squint down and just look for light and dark masses. Anytime I'm drawing hair on anyone, whether it's short or long hair or curly or anything like that. I never want to try and copy it one-to-one. I do want to try and get as close as I can. And since I'm working from reference, I don't have to worry about the hair moving. If you are working from life, It's one of those things where you would want to try and find a sitting where the hair is in a nice spot where you like the shapes and design of it and then try and just nail it in one sitting. In this particular case though, I still want to just focus on light and dark shapes. It would be very easy to get caught up in like little strands and little extra details and the hair that you might see like highlights or anything like that. But that's really kind of more stuff you would save for the end if you were doing a finished drawing. And even then, if it was a finished drawing, you would still want to simplify, I think a lot of the information down. So in this particular case for the block in sake, I'm still just thinking lightened dark shapes and I'm trying to design the hair a little bit so that it looks nice for a drawing, but I'm trying to not copy it one-to-one. Working down the neck. I'm really just going to be thinking about the cast shadow that's coming off of the jaw down into the pit of the neck and a little bit of the sternocleidomastoid, which is that long neck muscle that's creating that kind of unique sort of sharp shadow there. But realistically, even though I see quite a bit going on through the collarbone and the neck, I want to try and simplify that down into some larger shapes and not really copy what I'm seeing there. The reason for that is that she's she has a very thin neck and I see a lot of little striations coming off of the collarbone and things like that. And if I were to try and copy that one-to-one, I feel like it's going to take away from our face. So I want to just simplify that down into some larger shapes so that it remains a nice, simple area that is not drawing too much attention to itself. Now this is simply just a judgment call on my end and you can draw as you as you interpret things, but Anytime I'm working on a portrait, I'm always trying to think about elements that are not in the face itself that could potentially distract the viewer from the face. So if there's things that you see that are maybe very busy or other outside interests that is going to detract from, let's say, the features of the face or the face itself. Then I have a tendency to try and play those down a little bit so that the focus remains purely on the face and everything else just becomes a supporting element. Now with the hair and neck in place, I can start cleaning up the drawing and removing any excess lines that are no longer needed. Realistically, what I wanna do is I want to get rid of not only extra lines, but any lines that I see in the drawing that are perhaps a little bit too thick. I wanna go ahead and trim those downs that I'm purely left with a nice, clean, simple line. I really just want to see what shapes I've created in the block and so that if I need to adjust anything, it's going to be easier for me to re-assess and decide. Okay. If I need to adjust the shape or if something is completely off, I want to be able to just then remove it without having to worry about extra dark lines or super thick lines or anything like that. So depending on the complexity of the portrait, this could take awhile to kind of go through and just make several passes over to clean areas up. And that's okay. As long as as long as you haven't drawn too heavy handed and your lines aren't overly dark, then this process should go fairly quickly. But again, every drawing is going to be a little bit different. And so I want to just take my time and just go section by section and start cleaning up individual areas as I see fit. And then from there we can start to reassess what needs to be changed to move forward. So as you begin to take out any sort of construction lines, hopefully if there's anything that looks off or something doesn't feel right, then at least it gives you an opportunity to refocus in on those areas to see what's going on. Now sometimes again, There's going to be things that you miss early on that just for whatever reason your eye doesn't catch them or anything like that and that's okay. I think that's part of the normal drawing process as you're working. And remember, this is still just a block and so we're not really focused on doing a Finnish or anything like that. This is our time to make those mistakes and double-check our accuracy. And if something just doesn't feel right, then we want to go ahead and try and address that right now before we get too far along in the drawing where it's gonna be even more difficult to make those corrections. 11. Refining shapes: So at this point, now that we've cleaned up our drawing, my next sort of path that I'm gonna be making is really just trying to refine everything. Now, depending on what your goal is, this can mean a lot of different things, but for me, I essentially have a good framework to build off of. Now, I've cleaned up the drawing. All the shapes that are there need to be there. And I really want to just focus in on individual areas and start looking for subtleties. This really for me, what that means is if there's specific angle changes or other little tiny details that I didn't put in initially. I want to start looking for those things now. Now, again, that can vary wildly from drawing to drawing. Because I'm not using any tone. I'm gonna, they're gonna be some limitations to that. But nonetheless, if there's little things that maybe I didn't put in initially or just sort of left out intentionally because they would have complicated the drawing too early for me. Now's the time to just go into those areas, refocus, and start looking for those subtleties that makes it really looked like her. So depending on again, what your goal is for the drawing, we could very well lead the drawing as it is right now. And it would probably be fine for a block in if I was going to take this to, let's say more of a Finnish and let's say maybe transfer it to another sheet of paper. Then in reality, I could probably just move forward and just go ahead and do that. But I really want to try and get as close to what I consider a finished blocking so that you can see what that looks like to me. Everyone's going to have their own interpretation of that. But I want to try and just get this as refined as it is so that if I was taking it to a finish, I would want to have all of this information in there for myself before I move forward into tone and things like that. Now, in reality, all I'm gonna be doing is just injecting a little bit more information, looking for more subtleties like angle changes and putting in details that I skipped past initially like the pupil, maybe the the subtlety and the lower lid. Extra bits of information in the nose. Again, that's going to vary from drawing to drawing. So it's one of those things you just have to assess each time you work. So even in an area like this with this particular eye, there's quite a bit going on. So this would be an area where I would slow down and I would really want to assess each individual shape that I'm drawing so that I can be as accurate as I can. So in this instance, like the lower lid area, there's actually quite a bit going on. And as it connects to the corner part of the eye socket, there's a little cast shadow. So there's all these little things that could potentially add up. And I think it's more of a cause in this case of the lighting scenario. But every drawing again is going to be different so that you might end up seeing more information, seeing less information from drawing to drawing. So sometimes you may not really need to put that much, but it will ultimately become the way I sort of filter all of this is what is going to help me. And if the answer is, this little bit of information is going to make it easier for me to understand what I'm looking at, then I'll go ahead and put it in. If it really doesn't matter and I'm maybe an indifferent to it, then maybe I'll leave it out or simplify it and maybe not develop it much further. Ultimately, that is up to you. But I would say use that as a filter so that if, if something's going to help you go ahead and use it, put it in, Make it count. But if not, then maybe think about it. Don't, don't actually put an unnecessary things that are just going to confuse you. So as I'm working through the nose here, there's very specific plane changes that I'm seeing in the cartilage that even though this area is in heavy shadow, I want to at least put some of that information in there because it might help inform me as far as what I need to draw or look for in the light side. I would say this lower half of the face in particular on her. There's a lot going on as we get to the side of the cheek. And as it connects to the mouth, there's lots of little halftone shapes that I'm seeing. And so this is an area where I'd really want to slow down and try and look for very specific shapes that are going to be reflective of her likeness. And depending on what your lighting scenario is and the model and all of that, There's always these variables that you have to account for. And so if you find yourself in a situation where there's a lot going on in a specific area, then you really just want to slow down even more. Now assuming we've taken the time to measure in the relative proportions of our block in our feeling pretty good. Then it's really just a matter of working within that area and starting to break it down section by section. So as an example, the lips themselves are kind of two separate shapes, but they're connected by shadows. And then those shapes are then connected to the chin and the cheek. And so all of these little things are interconnected. But if you focus on one little section at a time, it's much easier to manage than thinking about everything that's going on all at once. So e.g. a lot of what's going on and the lower lip and some of the smaller shadow shapes that are happening. And as they connect into the gel, there's these halftone shapes that I'm seeing in those halftone shapes aren't strong enough to be part of the shadow, but they're helping group the shadow together. So I may indicate those with some softer lines just so that I know that okay. These areas all essentially need to be tied together, but they may not be part of the larger shadow shape in general. Now, again, that's just a judgment call, but for me that I find that beneficial when there's very strong halftones to just group them as part of the shadow shape so that you're left with a much larger shape overall, rather than a bunch of small shapes that may not necessarily make sense on their own. 12. Finishing the block in : So as we're getting close to being done here, There's only a handful of things left for me to really focus on. And again, with this particular eye, because it's out in the light. There's not a whole lot for me to lock onto in terms of making it feel connected as part of the socket. So what I end up doing in this particular instance is that some of the halftone shapes that I see in the interior portion of the socket, as well as the lower lid and that whole general area. I end up just trying to find little shapes that allow me to connect it to the rest of the eye so that it doesn't feel like it's this island that's floating out in the middle of nowhere in terms of the light side of the face. And so that's something that ultimately, if we were doing a finished drawing, that might get downplayed. But at least for the sake of the block, when I want to find as many areas where I can make things feel connected. So I'm kinda, kinda emphasize some of those halftone shapes that I'm seeing so that I can finish this i, and just kind of make it feel just a little bit more connected to everything else. There's still a lot of information in terms of the lids themselves, the pupil and the iris and and all of that. But realistically, I was saying previously is that when you have an eye that's completely out in the light by itself, sometimes it can be a little bit tricky to make it feel anchored. So like I said, in this instance, I'll play up the half-tones. I'll even draw like the highlight shape that I'm seeing on the cheek. Just let it feels more cohesive overall in this area. And knowing full well that if we were doing a completed drawing that some of those mid tone ranges in the flesh would allow me to just make that I feel a little bit more grounded. But since we're working just in line, sometimes it's a little trickier, so I'm using whatever I can to make sure that this eye feels connected to the rest of the face. I'm going to do some last minute things here in the hair as well as the neck just so that I feel like I'm not neglecting these areas now. I wouldn't necessarily have to go back in. I think if I didn't want to because these areas are fairly simple and they don't necessarily need a whole lot of refinement. But just for the sake of doing a nice finished blocking, I wanna go ahead and revisit these areas and maybe just describe a little bit more information. Maybe put some more details in the hair just so that it looks cohesive with what I've done in the face. I don't want one area of the drawing to look incomplete versus another. So I want to try and bring the same level of finish, even though again, the block in the same level of finish to the entirety of the drawing. Now I don't necessarily have to do too much in this area because again, the neck and the hair and all of these little areas that are further away from the face. I don't want to draw too much attention to them. So I'm gonna just put kinda what I feel like I can get away with information wise. Now, you can certainly do do it differently if you feel like you want to add more information or anything like that. But again, keep in mind that when you're working on a portrait is that you want to try and maintain the emphasis purely on the face itself. So any peripheral areas like the hair or anything like that are always going to be supporting elements. So I like to not overemphasize too much information in those areas. Getting back to the hair on the right side again, this is a little bit more active side and there's some cool little bits of information that I'll go ahead and put in. Since the other side of the hair is primarily going to be in shadow and it's a much simpler shape. Now again, I still don't want to put in strands of hair or anything like that. I'm still thinking about lightened dark masses and seeing where the hair is sort of curling in on itself. But I still want to try and maintain. Large mass overall and then maybe find a few individual shapes on the interior that will maybe just give it a little bit more life than just having it be one solid, flat mass. Now there is one thing I will say on the lower portion of the hair, or kind of creating some smaller cast shadows on the neck. And I see that kind of repeating and a few areas. Now I won't necessarily those kinds of details in because for a block in, I just don't really feel like it makes sense that those would very much be like finishing elements if we were going to take this to like a tonal finish. So just kinda keep that in mind unless you have a very prominent cast shadow or anything like that. If you see little subtleties of very small shadows that are taking place, I, I don't necessarily think it would be that important to include those. You certainly can, if you'd like. But I would say try and play those things down so that they don't stand out too much. So this step is completely optional, but it's something I might recommend so that it becomes a little bit easier to see what shapes you've created. And that is, once you feel like the block and is in a good place and you don't have to make too many corrections. Or if you feel like you know what, I've reached the point at where I don't know if I can do anything more to this drawing, then I would suggest putting in just a little light tone in your shadow shapes or any areas where you feel like it might be beneficial. And that just allows you to see the drawing a little bit differently now that you're not just looking at a series of lines. To me, this is also another way of using that light tone as a tool so that if I need to make corrections, they become a little bit more obvious now that I have some contrast on the paper, I'm filling this in with a hard pencil so that I don't go too crazy in terms of value. But it's enough where there's some contrast against the paper. And if something feels off, I can just make quick comparisons. And if I need to take something out or make changes, then I still have that flexibility to do so. So as I'm finishing up again, I just want to emphasize, even though this is the end of the block in, is that all these steps that we did originally from the beginning is the most important part. So as you're beginning any drawing, whether it's a portrait or still life or figure or whatever. All of the steps where you're measuring and plotting angles and trying to find spatial relationships and making shapes. That's kinda where you want to spend the majority of your time. And these, these last little pieces I'm doing here, It's kinda, it's kinda the reward. You get to fill in some shapes and get to see what you've made. But all of the work happens up front. And that's really where you want to just give yourself the time to really slow down, measure, find angles. And in my opinion, and I remember when I was a student is that doing these block ends was the most difficult thing and it should take a while in the beginning. If you're just starting out, give yourself plenty of time and don't put any pressure on yourself to try and get these done quickly. The more you do, the more you practice them, you'll naturally get faster as you get confident with the process. But the first few drawings you end up doing could take you several hours. And that's okay. As long as the drawings accurate and you're going through the steps, you'll gradually just pick up the pace and you will, you'll start to understand and things will become a little bit more intuitive. But for now again, just give yourself plenty of time to go through the very beginning stages. And the emphasis ultimately is going to just try and be on accuracy and proportion. 13. Start three quarter: So as we get started here, the main reason I chose this particular pose, an angle is that it's fairly standard three-quarter. It's not too extreme. It's not it's kinda like a nice happy medium, three-quarters, something that's fairly standard that you may come across as you're working, either from reference or from life, there's a good chance you're going to find yourself in some sort of three-quarters scenario. So now, depending on how far away a model is turned or gaze, there's always gonna be variables in terms of where the center line is placed. But nonetheless, again, this is a very standard three-quarters so that hopefully I can go over the process of a block in and how I get started. Now you'll notice I've started with this sort of oblong shape. That's not quite an egg shape or anything like that, but it has a couple of points to it. And what I'm looking for here essentially is like a corner of the chin, the back of the skull, as well as the forehead. And from the back portion of the skull, I'm going to pull this line down and just trace it over to where I think the neck is. Now for the time being, All of these are just estimations, but it's simply a way for me to get a large mass established on the page right away without overthinking it too much. Now this could very well change depending on the degree of turn or how much of a three-quarter you're working with, depending on the pose. But this isn't a bad way to get started because you're accounting for a lot with a very simple shape. The next thing I want to do immediately once I have something on the page is establish a center line. Now again, this is a fairly standard three-quarters, so I don't have the nose going past the far cheek. It's just it's a nice balanced three-quarters, so but I still want to have a center line in there. So I kinda have a good idea about how much space I have on one side versus the other. With a rough shape established, I immediately want to start thinking about the hair shape and essentially the exterior and interior silhouette. Now because in this instance she has short hair. There's not a whole lot I need to account for, but I still want to get some sort of basic shapes so that I know what I'm working with. So what I'm going to focus on right now is just establish the interior angle of the hair as it's wrapping around the skull. And then I want to think about the back portion of the hair shape. And it's gonna be a fairly simple geometric shape, but I still need to account for it so that I have the entire shape that I want to work with. And things can be changed from here, but I want to just get started and get something on the page. One thing you may want to consider is really in these early stages of the drawing, I want to try and capture is this very nice poster effect. Meaning with just these simple shapes of the head and the hair and those interior and exterior shapes is I want it to read from a distance. Does is what I'm establishing right now in these early stages, does it already have somewhat of a likeness in the overall large mass? And I'll try and stay in this stage of the drawing until I feel like it's working fairly well. I wouldn't want to move too far ahead at this point if that large mass effect was not working well for me. Now in this particular instance with her having short hair, there's not a whole lot to really try and get in. I'm gonna be more focused on specific angles that I'm seeing. But nevertheless, if the model has longer hair or shorter hair, we still want to try and establish this large poster effects so that it sets the stage for the rest of the drawing. But at least we got these large masses established and looking as good as we can get them for now, this early on. So with the general shape established, I want to go ahead and start plotting some axes lines. And I am keeping in mind that there's not a whole lot of tilt overall in the pose. So what I'm going to really be focusing on is making sure that all my axes lines are in line with one another, but also maintain that there is the spacing between the left and right side and how much of one side versus the other. So that's something I'm always gonna be keeping in mind given the three-quarter pose. Now generally speaking again, we can think of the front plane of the face is being broken down into thirds from the hairline to the brow line, to the brow line to the bottom of the nose, from the bottom of the nose to the chin. And that's a very generic way of getting started. Now on her in particular, I find that the maybe the top third is perhaps a little bit shorter and the middle third being a little bit longer. But I won't necessarily know until I get some more information. And so starting off with a general even thirds isn't a bad place to start. But at the end of the day, you always want to make sure that you're measuring against other things in the drawing so that you're more accurate to the model and not going off of a formula. Once I have my axes lines in place, I need to start breaking this down a little bit further. And for most portraits, I like to start with the sockets simply because it's one of the larger masses to build out of. Now, in this particular instance being a three-quarter pose, what I want to be looking for is the angle of the brow and then the corner point when the brow comes to a peak is something I want to focus on because that's gonna give me an indication of where the side plane of the face is coming into contact with the front plane. You can see this rhythm I pulled all the way from that corner of the eyebrow and all the way wraps around down to the chin. And now you see a separation of a front and a side. And this is something I like to do immediately anytime I'm dealing with a three-quarter, regardless of how extreme it is. Another way to think of it really is also is that if we were to draw the head in a box, we want to make sure that the front plane is showing where all our features are. And then the side plane is mostly going to be, let's say like the cheekbone, the ear, and then where the hair is coming into contact with that. The nice thing is though, with the side plane now firmly established and I can feel a bit more confident about how I'm going to construct the rest of the drawing. And I also have a very simple degree of dimensionality, even though there's not much on the page right now. With the one eye socket. And I can kind of use that as a tool to help me construct the nose. And I really just want to start building into the third that I've established. Now in terms of the angle, I'm just going to keep something generic for now. I'm not too concerned with any sort of contours that are specific to her nose type just yet, I want to just get the general masses established. Now from the corner of the socket, I'm going to basically just pull an angle down to where I think the wing of the nostril is gonna begin. So I'm looking for that triangular relationship between the eye socket and the nose. And just trying to make sure that those angles line up together. The nice part is, is that once I find the corner of the nostrils, I can then relate it to where the tear duct is, where the corner of the eyebrow is, and start creating different points to measure against and make sure that at least heading in the right direction before I start adding any other information. The nice thing, at least with a three-quarter, is that I don't have to worry about matching eyes or making something completely symmetrical as if I were drawing it straight on. So once I establish a lot of the information on the side that's closest to us. Getting the far side of the face, which is mostly just gonna be the socket and the cheekbone is it kind of wraps around that far socket. There's really not a whole lot for me to solve. So I can spend the majority of my time really focus in on the side that's closest to us to make sure that things are lining up in are essentially where they need to be. I'm just going to establish the far socket that I see here. Not so much that again, I'm not going to be dealing with a whole lot on this particular side of the face except for the eye itself. But more importantly, what I really wanna make sure is getting the cheekbone that's wrapping around the outside socket as it goes down into the mouth. At least in the sense of a three-quarter, depending on how extreme your angle is, making sure that the far socket, as well as the cheek and the mouth area are gonna be very important elements for this particular kind of pose. Because depending on how extreme recorder is turned, we need to be able to show the viewer the sense of overlap in the forums as we're constructing the face. 14. Three quarter 2: So continuing along before I get too far ahead of myself, I want to re-establish my center line. The reason I want to do this is because I have enough information in the portrait now where the original center line I use to get started really is no longer helping me. So I want to just re-establish a new center line that's going to follow down the forehead, through the nose, over the mouth, and then down the chin. And the reason I want to do this is you can see the difference from the original center line to the new center line. And I will only adding this new center line to maintain a sense of perspective. Now with my center line in place, I can go ahead and start breaking down the rest of the features. Now, I want to just establish a ball of the eye for this far side. Not because I intend to draw this I right now, but what's more important for me it with this three-quarter is that I want to make sure that I'm getting the overlap of the eye socket as well as the cheekbone around the ball of VI. This will be one area later on where I'm going to have to really pay attention to the overlapping forms as I get further into the details. But for now, I just want to start with a simple shape and then build the rest of the features. Using the corner of the nose. I want to go ahead and pull a line down to where the corner of the mouth is because it's a close distance and easy to measure. And if I need to make a comparison, I can also use the tear duct or any other point that I've established thus far. And what I end up doing is a lot of the times is just making a checklist of areas. I can check one point to the next and I find that I do that all over the face just so I can make sure that things are lining up where there needs to be before I need to draw any other information. Getting to the mouth. This is one of the more important areas when I was talking about altering my center line. And the reason again for this is the change in perspective. You always have to consider that the mouth is protruding off of the front plane of the face, just like the nose is. And so the reason we need to adjust that center line is to make sure that the mouth stays in perspective with our three-quarter pose. If I were to draw my mouth on the original center line, it would be terribly out of perspective. So that's something that you want to keep in mind depending on the the three-quarter view and how extreme or annex dream it is, you want to adjust the center line for the muzzle shape of the mouth to match it so that you can make sure that everything is staying aligned in perspective with the rest of the face. Now the reason I'm stressing this quite a bit is because it's something that I struggled with a lot when I was a student and I was constantly drawing the mouth out of perspective. And so it's just something to keep in mind for this area. And depending on the model and everyone's mouth and muzzle shape is going to be very different. And so it's just something that you want to keep in mind as you're, as you're drawing. Is that the amount of perspective or how much the mouth is protruding off the front plane of the face. You really just want to make sure that you're carefully observing that. And in this particular instance, it's gonna be very important for the little bit of the muzzle shape as I see it overlap with the cheek and then how the chin is inserting into that muscle shape as well. So again, with a three-quarter, depending on how extreme it is, the amount of overlap that we see amongst the features is going to be very important because that's what's going to give the drawing that sort of depth that we need given that we don't have a whole lot to work with and this particular instance. So now with the features all roughly in place, I'm gonna go ahead and just start focusing on areas like the neck and just kinda reshaping the hair since I haven't really deviated from the initial block in. Now one thing you want to try and do is as you're working on your drawing, try and bring up everything together so that you can see all areas of the drawing develop simultaneously. It's very easy at first to kind of get stuck in one area and just focus in. And sometimes it's better to just either step back and see what areas need to be brought up so that everything is resolved as you're going. Now in this particular instance, there's not a whole lot that I'm gonna be doing on the lower portion, pass the neck, so I'm not too worried about the collarbone and areas like that. So it's not something I'm going to even focus on as far as the hair concerned and like areas like the ear, the majority of it is in shadow. Based off of my initial block in, there are still some small changes I need to make. And once I get to the front part of the hair, there's a little bit more information that I can develop a little bit more. Now granted, shorter hair, there's not going to be a whole lot to really latch onto. But she does have a couple of interesting shapes towards the front of her hair that I can at least separate from the rest of the back part of the skull. Now I do want to establish a little bit more of a cheek plane so that way I can at least get it in there. And I'm gonna go ahead and just pull a line from the mouth. You can kinda see it would loop around towards the ear. And by doing so, it's establishing the cheek plane. But you can also see how the form shadow of the cheek is inline with it. And it's nice in this particular instance with the very standard sort of lighting that we're dealing with. And you can see how the, the, the side plane of the face and the front plane of the face are coming together in that particular area. Now you can also see how it ties into the corner portion of the eye socket and we're left with that little cut out here. Now realistically, I think with this particular form shadow, it's going to just go down that cheek and then it starts getting a little bit more interesting as we get down towards the mouth and then into the lower part of the chin. Now there's some halftone shapes that I do see that are coming from the gel area. But for now, I want to just think about the major form shadow and not get too caught up in half-tones. Now, in this particular angle and lighting, she does have a unique knows type in the sense that there's a lot of small little planes and the cartilage that I see. So I really want to take my time with this particular feature because there's a lot of information that's taking place. Now, I am still thinking about there's four basic planes of the nodes that I have to consider. But I do want to keep in mind as they go beyond those four basic planes, There's a lot of other information that I need to sort of put so that I capture her nose type. Well, I have the majority of the bridge of the nose established. I find a lot of times with this sort of lighting scenario starting from the base or the lower part of the nose and working with that bottom plane. Because you can tie a lot of these areas to shadow shapes. And we do have a cast shadow coming off the nose. It makes it a little bit easier to establish some of the other information. And you can kind of build off of that bottom plane and see how the wing of the nostril connects into the ball of the nose. And then that naturally connects into the side plane and then reattaches into the bridge or the front plane of the nose as well. I will say that anytime I have a model that maybe has more interesting cartilage in their nose is I still want to focus on the four basic planes of that nose first. Now in this instance I only see three because of the angle of the pose. But nonetheless, I still, before I start breaking things down into smaller plane structures or anything like that, I want to think about the large mass of the nose itself and then slowly start dividing it up into sections. Now if you find yourself getting lost, maybe in some of the information than what I would suggest is just try and either squint down a little bit more and see how you can simplify this shape. Because ultimately at the end of the day, we want the larger effect that's happening in the portrait itself. So we don't necessarily need to inject some of these details. It does sometimes help to know what's there underneath from an anatomical standpoint. But if you're not that familiar with any of the anatomy of the features or the face in general, try and squint down, simplify. Think of just lightened dark shapes. With this kind of lighting situation, it does make it a little bit easier so that if you do find yourself maybe getting a little bit lost in some of the structures. Rely on the shadows to help resolve some of those areas for you. 15. Features: As I'm finishing off the lower part of the mouth, again, the important part in this area is really just maintaining the sense of overlap that's happening. Now because of the lighting situation, it may be a little bit hard to see. But the one important thing in this particular area is making sure that the muzzle shape of the mouth, and as it comes into contact with the lips and the area around the cheek is we want to make sure that we're getting that sense of overlap in these forms now, even though they're in the light side of the face, it can be maybe a little hard to see. So even in a block in stage, you really want to make sense of these forms as one is coming in front of the other. And so in this area around the muzzle and the cheek is an area you'd want to spend a little bit of time resolving. And I would say for most three-quarters, how extreme this is, is going to vary from model to model because of everyone's facial features and things like that. So just keep in mind with how extreme of a three-quarter and how much overlap you encounter in this area. You but something you really want to focus on and make sure that everything looks in perspective and it's sitting right on the face. I think on her in particular, there's some smaller sub forms like in the lower lip area, as well as some of the muscles underneath the lower lip and around the chin. So even though they might be in like a halftone type of shape or area, as far as lighting is concerned, I would still want to go ahead and include them and make specific shapes so that I had something very solid to work from. If I were going to take this drawing a little bit farther. And again, I would say that depending on the lighting situation and even the model in particular, if you have halftone shapes that aren't necessarily super in shadow or anything like that. If you can make them very specific or even grouped them to the larger shadow mass, it might be a good idea to go ahead and even do that as part of your block in just so that there's a little bit more cohesiveness in some of the shapes that are occurring on the face. I think in this case really it's not a whole lot, but you can see some of the smaller shapes I've created around the muzzle shape and the chin. And it's really just because I want those areas to feel like they're very locked together. And I don't want any small shapes just floating out by themselves or anything like that. You wouldn't necessarily want halftone shapes to be isolated. You would always want to find a way to connect them to something else in the face so that they feel attached to something. And they, they're not just these little shapes that are kind of idling, sitting out in a light space that makes it feel a little disassociated with the rest of the head. So getting back up to the eyes, I wanna go ahead and start blocking these in with a little bit more information. And realistically how I'm gonna do this is I'm going to just start with the shadow shapes because they're very prominent, especially on this eye that's closest to us. Now I would want to start more or less near the tear duct, but I want to build out the interior shadow shape of the socket since that's the largest shadow mask in this particular area. Once I have that in, I can use some of the eyebrow to connect some of the other shapes. Because we have the far shadow shape on the outside of the socket, then that all kinda ties in together with the rest of the eye. But what I like to do is just think of the I in sections. Even though I know that there's the socket, Both lids, the eyeball itself, and then some shadow shapes. I first want to just keep it as simple as I can. So I'm just going to try and copy the shadow shapes that I see because I already have the exterior structure of the eye socket that I established from the beginning. So I want to just work around that and then build those shapes into it knowing that I have some parameter that I can work into. And if I need to make any adjustments along the way, I can go ahead and do that while there's very little information in place. With the shadow shapes in place, I'm going to start building out the rest of the eye from the tear duct. Since at least the tear duct I can use as a landmark to connect everything. Now, one thing to keep in mind is with the shadow shapes there. All I really want to look for is I want to look at the light shapes that I see in-between. That way I don't really have to think so much about the eye itself. But I'm just trying to look at the spacing in-between the shadow shapes and the light shapes. I would say initially as you're blocking things in, is try and just think objectively about the shapes themselves so that, that way you're not getting caught up in trying to draw an eye or nose or mouth. And realistically, as you go throughout the drawing, you want to just be focused on making sure that the shapes are accurate. And then anatomy is helpful to an extent, areas where you start to get lost and you're not quite sure about how things are overlapping or connecting. That's where sometimes the anatomical knowledge can come into place. But I think in the sense of trying to just capture the general shapes of what we're doing. Then oftentimes they just kinda forget about what I'm drawing and I'm just objectively trying to recreate the shapes that I'm seeing regardless of what feature or anything that it is. And that way I can turn my mind off in that sense that I'm not thinking about anatomical features or, or anything like that, but it's purely a shape exercise. Now on this particular, I do see a lot going on in some of the shadow shape around the lower lid as it's kind of connecting to the corner of the cheek and this shadow shape through here. So I want to take note of that and I do see a little bit of information coming from the lower the anatomy just under the lower lid of the eye and how it's connecting to the rest of the face, including the side plane of the nose and that entire area. So those things are something that I'd probably want to keep track of as I'm blocking the eye and the surrounding areas. Even though if we were to finish this drawing into like a tonal drawing or anything like that. It's stuff that I would probably play down and I probably wouldn't overstate those kinds of things because it would have a tendency to age her or make her look older than what she is, but from the standpoint of a block and I'm really not opposed to putting in more information just so they have a better understanding of what I'm trying to sort of suggest in terms of the structure of the face, but keep in mind that it's ultimately information that you might get rid of down the road as you progress the drawing. Now as I start to build out this far, I am going to treat it very similar to how I thought about the mouth and the lower cheek area in that because of the angle of the eye and how much I'm seeing, I have to be very careful about how the forms are overlapping in this particular area. So I'm keeping in mind that the eye itself, as it sits in the face, I want to make sure that the eye socket is wrapping around correctly. And then as I build out the lower lid and the rest of the I need to make sure that the cheekbone is wrapping around the eye correctly as well. There's a lot of little areas in this portion of the face that I need to make sure that the overlap is really feeling right. And so the hard part is, is that there's a lot of little forms like the, the top lid, the way it wraps around the ball of the eye, the lower lid. And then how all of that is interconnected with the eye socket and the far side of the cheek bone. So in this particular area, I might spend a little bit more time really making sure that the way I'm overlapping these different forms and how they're connected together. They really need to sit right, so that the perspective feels correct with the rest of the face. So that's something to keep in mind with the three-quarter portrait, depending on how extreme the angle is, is again, the way that we're overlapping forms in certain areas as they're turning in space and as one is coming in front of another, just be very mindful and take your time with those areas. As a good practice, I would really just say is that just work one shape at a time? So as I'm building it out, it's like I want to finish one little area, add another piece, then add another piece, and then hopefully things look right. And then once I have all the information in place, so both lids, the eye itself, then I can really focus and say, okay, well what's not working? What forms are not reading correctly? And then I can go back and make corrections as I need to. But just kind of take it slow, do it one shape at a time and just making sure again that the overlapping is sort of happening correctly and that things just feel like they're locked in place in conjunction with the rest of the eye. 16. Refining features: As I'm getting close to more or less wrapping up this eye again, the real area of focus for me on this particular feature is just making sure that I'm overlapping things correctly. And again, depending on the angle that you're drawing from the light source, is that sometimes there are certain areas in a drawing that could give you a little bit more trouble than others. And so if you find yourself in that position, what I really suggest that that point is you'd want to just slow down and really just chip away at it. Don't if there's a trouble area in a drawing is it's just slow down. Take your time and really try and solve that particular area one shape at a time. Unless you're working from life and there's a very specific time limit, then that's one scenario. But if you're working from reference like this or anything, just really take your time and make sure that things are looking correct before you move too far ahead. Alternatively, is if there's an area that is maybe giving you a little trouble, sometimes it's good to maybe step away, buildup another area of the drawing, and then come back to it at a later time so that you kinda just free your mind of that trouble area for just a little bit and focus on other parts of the drawing and then come back to it. Usually I would say there's always one part of a drawing that might give me a little bit trouble and then just, you know, it's, it's kinda changes from drawing to drawing. So I always expect it and when it does happen, I just don't freak out. I just take my time, work really slow and just try and resolve things as they come. So just keep that in mind as you're working. But again, if you find yourself getting too caught up in one area, sometimes it's good to just step away and start developing other parts of the drawing just to give yourself a little bit of a break. Now, just getting down to the ear, I'm not going to do a whole lot in this area simply because it's, you know, it's in heavy shadow, but I do need to have some information in there so that it's not just a completely flat area. Realistically, when you get something in heavy shadow, you want to just squint down and indicate things that really stick out so that way you're not putting too much information into the shadows. Now you could very well decide to flush out every little bit of information just so that you know where things are sitting. Ultimately, if we were to continue on in this drawing, this would be an area where I'd want to make sure that the necessary information is there, but I wouldn't want too much so that it draws away from the light portion of the face. Now for the neck and shoulder area, I'm not gonna go too deep in this particular section. I do want to account for it, so I'm going to put just a little bit of information. Really, I would say the primary thing to focus on would be like the cast shadow that's coming off from the lower jaw onto the neck and down into the shoulder. But otherwise, I'm going to keep this area fairly simplified. And I would say in general, unless you're doing like a three-quarter portrait where the rest of the shoulders is involved. Then you would want to either find a nice way to vignette the drawing. Which is why I always look for either the neck line or how it, depending on what the person is wearing, you really want to find a nice way to end the drawing. But you would want to keep some of those supporting elements, let's say like the clavicle or the pit of the neck. You'd want to simplify those down a little bit so that they're not taking away too much from the face, but they do need to be in there, so it's nice to account for them. Now as I move on to the hair, realistically because of the lighting situation and the fact that she has shorter hair, there's not gonna be a whole lot for me to really get into. The upper portion around the top part of the head has a little bit of light hitting it. And so I can indicate some of the shapes that I'm seeing. And I really just want to keep it fairly simple. I'm not going to be looking for strands of hair or anything like that. I just want to kind of look at lightened dark shapes, making sure that it reads like what I'm seeing on the model. And then if I were to finish this drawing in the end, realistically the back part of the skull. The side plane of the head and everything like that a lot. That's gonna be in heavy shadow, so I wouldn't necessarily have to worry about that area so much. But because of that, some of the little strands around the sort of the top part of the head. I might find a few, just a little bit of highlights just so that it's not in this completely ignored area or I'm not paying any attention to the hair. But for the most part with this kind of hairstyle and whatnot, I want to keep it fairly simple. Now that everything is more or less accounted for, I'm just going to go into the drawing and start cleaning it up a little bit. I really want to just remove some of these construction lines and really see what shapes I have left to work with and then start making any sort of changes or adjustments that stick out to me. And again, it's one of those things where you can leave the construction lines and if they're helping you. But at some point, it might just start to be a little bit too much that's going on in the drawing. So you may want to take some of those out just so that you have a clear idea of what you're left with. Now as I'm cleaning up the drawing, I'm going to just slowly start to refine those areas as I go along. Now, I'm not really going to be changing a whole lot, but if there's little things that maybe I missed initially, or if I had simplified them too much initially in the block. And then now I want to go back in and be more specific. So if there's like little angle changes or subtleties that perhaps I missed, then now's the time that as I'm cleaning up and I go back over these areas that I really want to focus in on those subtleties so that I can really try and capture the likeness as best I can. Now it doesn't necessarily mean you want to go in and just adjust everything, but you really just want to focus in on each individual area and look for subtleties. Look for slight angle changes. Look for the way shapes are designed. And it's those little things that add to the total effect of the drawing in the end. And so I would say that these are the things you want to capture in the block in, while the drawing is still in the linear stage. Because if we were to hypothetically take the drawing forward with tone than trying to make those adjustments once there's tone on the paper, becomes a bit more difficult to do. So if you can capture all of these things right now at the start, then you're going to be in a much better place if you decide to take the drawing to a finish. Just to make this area a little bit easier to see, I'm going to put in just a very light bit of tone. And that way there's a lot of lines going on in the eye area. So sometimes that's a little helpful. And I would suggest if there's if there's any sort of confusion as you're going along and cleaning up the drawing is if you need to put in a little bit of tone just so that you can see are shapes better. Then go ahead and do so. Considering that I'm using a harder lead pencil, I'm not too concerned about the overall tone getting too dark or anything like that. You know, just something to keep in mind is that because there's a lot of lines that occur as you're blocking things in. It does get confusing. So if you need to put in a little wash of tone just so that you can read everything a little bit easier, then go ahead and do that. Now finishing up the nose, even though there's quite a bit of this in shadow, I still wanna go ahead and draw a lot of the information that I'm able to see. So in this particular instance, a lot of the smaller plane shapes in the nose that I see in the cartilage, I want to go ahead and inject. So even though I've established the larger masses of the nose, there's a lot of these smaller sub planes that I see in the wing of the nostril and around the side plane of the nose that I want to at least try and capture that even though they may not be in the finish, I want to account for them so I know exactly what's taking place in that area. 17. Finishing block in : So as we're getting everything more or less filled in, at this point, I'm just going to focus on looking for smaller details are transitional areas where I can maybe either add more information or clean up areas so that they're a little bit more descriptive. Realistically, I would say at this point that the block in is more or less finished. Now, how far you take it from here, It's really up to you. As long as all the sort of the features and information is in place, how much accessory information is more or less up to you. Now because we're really focused in this particular lesson on going overboard a little bit, I would say what the block in. It's kinda nice to have some of these extra elements in there like little planes and the lips or just below the lower part of the underside of the lip and the chin. Sometimes it's nice to maybe over-explain these areas just visually for yourself so that you really understand what's going on in these areas. Now, ultimately, like I've said before, is that as you start adding a lot of this accessory information is at the drawing can get very busy and perhaps maybe a little bit overdone. But because I know I'm not taking this to a finish or adding any sort of tone, then I feel okay with putting in some of this extra information just as almost its own foremost for details sake, I guess you could say. But again, I would leave that up to you depending on what your focus is and what you're practicing at the moment. I think if anything, what you really want to pay attention to is just finding different ways in which you can describe information. Whether that's in a particular feature or particular planes in the face, is finding a little ways where you can inject information to describe a piece of form. But doing it with line and not really relying on tone to suggest those forums for you. Some of the more beautiful drawings I've seen really were essentially linear drawings and that they didn't really have any tone per se, but they were still very descriptive and they still had a nice sense of form regardless of having any tone or not. Now, I think for this particular exercise, I'm still thinking about form. But more importantly, for a block when I'm thinking about how forms are overlapping and kinda what I was describing earlier with the three-quarter in terms of the relative degree at which the head is turned in how an eye socket is gonna be overlaps by a cheek and then through the mouth area. Those are the things I would really focus on with this kind of a pose. But regardless of what your situation is with the model or your reference, you still want to find little areas where you can suggest form, even though we're only working in line. So finding overlaps, finding the way certain things are turning. Sometimes you can even suggest these with different line widths or anything like that. Now that's something I really haven't talked about as far as varying or line. But to be honest, I think in a block and I'm not really concerned with that too much. I'm really just focused more on construction where I think varying the width of your line is more of a finishing thing if you're going to include linear elements in a finished drawing, but that's just my own interpretation. But that might be something to think about in your own work as you move along. So again, even working on this far I hear what's really important is the overlap in the lids that I'm seeing on the model and making sure that the top lip is really wrapping around the ball of the eye. And then the lower lid itself, even though it's much smaller, still needs to have some of that wrap-around effect. Now I'm only seeing a little tiny hints of the lower lid as it's kinda tucking around. But in this instance I would say even including maybe a little bit of the pupil and then maybe suggesting the lashes. It really depends on the person's type in the model and their general structure. But ideally you want to find again, those areas where if you can suggest the idea of something wrapping around and thinking about how the lid is hugging the ball of the eye and that surface. That's really what I want to suggest in this area because otherwise I don't really have a whole lot to work with on this far side. I because I'm not seeing the opposite side of the far tear duct. I'm really just seeing the single tear duct that's closest to the nose. Then I have the rest of the eyes. It's going off in perspective. Again, things to be mindful of as you're working. And again, depending on the how extreme the three-quarter poses that you're working from, that you may not see as much or even less information. It really just depends on the angle. But the majority of the face resolved, I'm just going to get back up into the hair and do maybe do a little bit on the neck here just so I can finish up the drawing. Realistically, we are done at this point, but because the hair and the neck are supporting elements, I want to go ahead and put in just a little bit more information. Depending on the pose that you're working from. Let's say, depending on, let's say what the model is wearing. If they have an interesting shirt or maybe they have some accessories, how much you include in the block and is ultimately up to you. But I like to think as the drawing as a whole. So it's not just the portrait itself, but it's also what's connected to the model. So sometimes you may have accessories that are part of the pose that are actually really important to the composition of the drawing. Sometimes too, that could even just be the model's hair if they have really long hair. And that becomes part of the composition in general and part of your design. Now because she has shorter hair and a rather simple shirt, this particular pose is perhaps not the best example. So I'm going to keep it relatively simple. But another drawings I've done, let's say the model has a scarf or again, like long hair or an interesting jacket that has an interesting color or anything like that. Those all become supporting elements of the drawing. So those are things I would include as part of the block in. Now again, given that the focus for this lesson is really just the face itself and the general construction. We don't really have to worry about that too much, but it's something to consider depending on what reference or when working from a model, what you want to include as part of your block in 18. Closing Thoughts: So I hope that after watching the demonstration videos that you have a much stronger sense of how to block in a portrait, or at least what your goal should be at the end of the block and stage. Now, I just have a few drawings here, just show you different styles of blocking that are more or less the same. And maybe some have a little bit more to them than others. But you still get the idea about what the goal for the exercise is. Now you can certainly do different kinds of blockchains where some are perhaps a little bit more simplified. Sunlight, these are perhaps a little bit more in depth. I think it does ultimately depend on the situation and what the goal is for the drawing. And as you get more advanced and more confident in these blockings, sometimes you can go with very little in that block in stage before you proceed. So long as you're careful. But if you're just starting out on your kind of a little bit uncertain about what you should be doing. I hope that this gave you an idea about the thought process that goes into it. And I would encourage you to really just take your time and get as good at this stage of drawing as you possibly can, because it, things will just get so much easier after this stage, but it does take a while to just get comfortable with starting from a blank sheet of paper and just kinda constructing a head out of nothing essentially. So I'm hoping the demonstrations made sense and you're able to follow along. And I would just encourage you to keep practicing these and don't be too hard on yourself or put too much pressure. It's just kind of do the exercises, practice them frequently, and just do the best you can. Thank you for watching.