This was sort of a quick doodle in Brushes while waiting*, as an exercise in just starting at a random feature and building (rather than the global construction approach seen in the previous post on this subject), using simple lines to hold and suggest form… but I liked the person who emerged, so I decided to finish her up a bit more and throw on some colour.
I actually think I sort of know her a bit. Something about the look in her eye, the tilt of her head, and the willful set of the mouth.
You know, I think I may use her as a character in The Project. She’d kick a few doors down, and not take any nonsense, don’t you think? (Scientist, or non-scientist? Must decide later.)
Watch her being built from blank page to finish by clicking:
-cvj
*On iPad, with stylus, and later, fingers.
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I don’t think gender is so apparent really as just an appearance. If we took just headshots of people with neutral hair and no makeup, they would appear much more neutral. The cues are in movement, wardrobe, and speech. A drawn face doesn’t have much detail relatively, so subtle things like skin texture are lost… if I’m drawing a girl for sure I just make her topless or put a bow on her head.
Yes that was interesting Clifford…..frame by frame, adds up to an interesting result once bringing it all together as a artistic example in flowing form.
It reminded me of the books you could get while younger that as you let the pages flip very fast this lent toward this kind of motion.
Cool.
Best,
I know what you mean. Making up faces out of whole cloth is an interesting process, for that and other reasons, and extremely different from drawing an existing person. Many of my women do end up skewing male if I am not careful, sometimes quite to my surprise. (In drawing I mean! Happily, this has not happened in my dating life…! :)) There are subtle things you can do to ensure that a female facial form is more likely to emerge, but they are subtle. Having a stock thing that one does all the time can make one end up drawing the _same_ woman every time, which is not great. So one needs to learn a wide range of paramaters one can tweak… I am still learning my craft on that, by just observing all the time, looking at faces deeply, and drawing, drawing, drawing…
Oh, I forgot to answer: This lady was female in my mind pretty soon after her nose and mouth were sketched, so a few seconds, and very firmly so once I did the slope of her forehead…. Then I decided to cement that by reducing her chin somewhat, bringing it further under the nose closer to where her neckline began, and thus making her mouth purse a tad more.
Cheers,
-cvj
Perhaps the first thing one notices when one sees a stranger is his or her gender. Did you intend your discovered person to be a girl from the outset? As I watched the drawing evolve I was aware of the subject skipping to and fro across the male/female divide before she finally settled down. As a child I always found it hard to draw a female face – ‘she’ would always end up looking like a chap with long hair (back then in the fifties such things were very rare, save in historical or Biblical scenes). Your animation brought my juvenile frustrations back to mind remarkably vividly.
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