August 4th 2001


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YouCanDraw.com's Insider Communiqué


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In today’s e-zine:

1) Series: Constructing parts of the head and face with “primitive shapes”:
    this issue - the eye.

2) What was wrong - or different - about Pete Towshends eyes?



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1) Primitive forms...again:-)

Good day all! Back an issue or two, (which might be a full month ago now) we
began looking at primitive shapes and how all the different parts of the head
and face could be broken down into the primitive forms. (Review: what are the
primitive forms? Ans: in two dimensions: circles, squares, and triangles. In three
dimensions: spheres, cones, pyramids, tubes, cylinders, and combinations of all
those.

The motivation for doing this? By understanding the primitive shapes and how
light behaved on each, you could look into and interpret all the different parts of the
face as variations of those primitive forms. The result? You can infer without thinking
too hard, logical shading and shadowing for your own works of art. Then you can
infuse them with real three dimensional appeal.


More noses

Last time we looked at the nose. We saw it could be related to a cone shape but
that was  a pretty simplified version. See the attached illustration
(“a1nose_break_down.gif”),  for a much more complicated - but also much more
interesting - version of it. See if you can't draw this freehand yourself. (The detached,
broken glass looking thing on the right is the tip of the nose broken up into cubes
and triangular “pizza pie” cuts.)



a1nose_break_down.gif



The eye as a primitive form(s)

Moving on to the eye. You can see the eye as a combination of two primitive
forms: a cylinder and a sphere. The upper and lower lids can be interpreted as
chopped-off cylinders sandwiching the sphere of the eye. As you look at the drawing
(“a1eyes1.gif”), you might also see it as a sphere within a sphere.

 



a1eyes1.gif



When I look closely at this picture though, I see the upper lid as more of a sphere
and the lower lid as more of a chopped off tube. It’s a little subjective. Look at
some real eyes - in the mirror or on an innocent bystander and see if you can't
see this. then check out illustration “a1eyes_in-place2” and see if you can't
make out the shapes you saw in “a1eyes1.gif”. In this picture, you'll see an
eye set within it’s bony recess.

 



a1eyes_in-place2




Robot head

Then move on to the final, mechanical looking pair of eyes (“a1funky_eyes.jpg”).
Again look to see if you can't see how the eyes fit into the rest of the face as a fairly
simple geometric shape. The picture is actually pretty complicated but all of it can be
broken down into simple geometric shapes. This is a spin off of a Berne Hogarth
illustration -  I just added  a cross-hatched effect to my own interpretation of  his
Marvel Comic book style. (I think Hogarth does a wonderful job of volumizing the
forms of the head and body. He also adds a surreal effect to his drawings)

 



a1funky_eyes.jpg


2) Answer to Pete Townshend question: What's wrong with his eyes?

Lastly, the answer to the question about “what’s wrong with Pete Townshend’s
eyes?” It’s this:  his left eye (the eye we see on the right), is very dark  - it has a
black iris. Pete has blue eyes and you can see the difference in the corrected
version. It’s amazing to me how this little difference makes the drawing look so
much more like “Pete”. See “a1tenznd_compare.jpg” to see this.

 



a1tenznd_compare.jpg

That’s all for today folks. If you have any questions, please don't be shy about
asking. Keep on drawing and talk to you soon :-)


Warmly,


Jeff  K.

Jeffrey O. Kasbohm
Executive Director
http://www.YouCanDraw.com

"Once and for all  getting you drawing faces and caricatures"
mailto:comments@youcandraw.com