Illustration from Encyclopedic

Illustration from Encyclopedic 

edited by Denis Diderot,  

1762–1777, engraving.

Drawings After Sculpture 

by Eliot Gold finger by Jon

de Martin, 2008, charcoal 

on newsprint, 24 x 18. 

This is not about capturing a likeness but strictly to explain the head’s three- dimensional orientation in space. Note how the head sits on the cylinder of the neck; they are not usually pointing in the same direction. (See the head in the lower right of the Holbein illustration.) The 19th-century French artist Jean- August-Dominique Ingres noted, “The head and neck never link together: They form two noncontinuous lines.” An 18th-century French engraving from Diderot’s Encyclopedic depicts the
ideal head divided into four equal parts. I find that making the distance of the hair- line to the top of the head shorter makes the head appear more natural. However, the more important lesson to be learned from this engraving is what happens to the construction lines when the head is seen from different perspectives.
Notice that when the head is tilted back the lines bend upward and the distance between the quarters decreases toward the top, and when the head is tilted down, the lines bend downward and the quarters decrease toward the bottom. Illustration 8 shows a figure from several views and uses forms that appear ovoid. Remember, Ingres also stated, “Never do the exterior contours bend inward. On the contrary, they bulge, they curve outward like a wicker of a basket.” When drawing the model, this conception is helpful in seeing the large, under- lying roundness of each mass of the figure. Keeping these principles in mind will help increase your ability to draw from both life and imagination.