Transcript TAEA drawing faces

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It Doesn’t Look Like Me
Eloiese Krabbenhoft
TAEA Conference, 2012
How soon did I start children drawing from observation?
Grade 1 – the first week of school.
Why?
1. Young children learn new verbal language more
easily than older children.
The same is true of learning a new visual
language.
2. Young children are learning so many new
things successfully, they believe you when
you tell them they can do it.
3. They don’t notice all the discrepancies
between what they drew and what they
see,
so they feel successful.
Feeling successful makes them willing to
keep trying.
Trying and practice improve their skills.
By 4th grade it is harder to begin
teaching students to draw from
observation.
And waiting until high school meets
with a lot of apathy, anxiety and
resistance.
WHY?
1. They have experienced failure. So they are
fearful they can’t do it.
2. They notice what they drew is not what they see,
reinforcing their belief they can’t draw.
3. They don’t want to try something new and fail in
front of their peers.
I’ve taught students from age 5 to
75 to draw using the following
strategy.
I start with the easiest type of model.
Which is, as most of you know….
line drawings - cartoons.
Why?
1. They are simplified, making it
easier to identify and compare:
• shapes
• sizes
• positions
Comparing
means asking
yourself:
What does the shape remind me of?
It doesn’t help to tell children what
YOU see.
They need to figure out what
THEY see.
So display a line drawing or cartoon
and
HAVE THEM TELL YOU what THEY see.
As they describe it, you draw it.
Make mistakes as you draw and let
students correct you.
Ask
• How big is this part compared to that part?
Ask
Where are the parts compared to each other?
Ask
•
Where do things start and stop?
(Draw what you see, not what you know.)
What part should I draw first to help me draw the other parts better?
Tell students:
People who: Look – Draw – Look – Draw – Look – Draw
Usually do better than those who: Look. Draw, draw, draw, draw….
So keep comparing what you see with what you are drawing.
What’s next hardest?
Photos or paintings
Why?
Harder because there is more info – value, texture, pattern, color,
but not too hard because it always is the same.
What is third hardest?
Still life objects
Grades 2 and 3
Why?
• If the artists change positions even a little,
they see different relationships of sizes,
shapes and positions of parts.
And, of course, it is hardest to draw
something alive because both the
artist and the model can move.
So my students did two projects
drawing from observation prior to
drawing portraits:
1.Drawing from line drawings,
2.Drawing from photos
They drew from images of bugs, fish or
birds.
Grade 1
Grade 2
Why limit images to fish, bugs, and birds?
They are distinctive and easily recognized.
When others recognize the image, the
artist feels successful and gains
confidence.
That reduces fear, anxiety and apathy.
What else can reduce fear, anxiety and apathy?
• Choice in subject matter –
reduces opportunities for students to
compare skill levels and decide they are
no good at art.
• Creation of a composition –
A good composition makes an attractive
picture so a weak image is less
noticeable.
• Don’t draw better than your average
student when demonstrating.
(unless, perhaps in Art II, III and IV!)
• Make mistakes when demonstrating so
you also can model how to correct
mistakes or use them creatively.
When drawing faces,
always lead students
to identify what they
need to observe
before letting them
start to draw.
There’s a lot to look for.
We talk about:
• the size of the neck and shoulders.
• the way the neckline wraps around.
Teaching students to observe
does not mean teach the
“proportions of the face”.
“Proportions of the Face”
fit many Caucasian adults of middle European descent.
They DO NOT fit all racial groups.
They don’t work
for most children.
close but still
no match
Everyone is different
(except, maybe, identical twins).
These are cousins with many similarities, but even they have differences.
If not “proportions of the face,
then what do we teach?
Answer
Compare:
• Size
• Shape
• Place/Position
Ask yourself:
What does the shape look like?
How big are the parts compared to each other?
Where are the parts compared to each other?
Let’s start with one eye,
then use it like a ruler to measure
everything else.
What parts does this eye have?
Eyebrow
Eyelid
Pupil
Iris
Inside corner
Eyelashes
White
People’s eyes have different:
Sizes
Shapes
and positions of the parts.
Start with the outside of the eye.
What does the shape remind you of?
They make me think of:
Thinking what the shape reminds
YOU of will help YOU draw it.
The corners of these eyes do not line
up level.
What about the corners of these eyes?
What about YOUR eyes?
It is easiest to add the
Inside corner next.
What does the shape of the white part or parts remind you of?
Football?
Part of a cow’s face
From the side?
Triangle? side-ways shark fin?
Usually
•
Part of the iris is hidden behind the eyelids.
• There are two white shapes instead of one.
Look at the pupils.
Where are the pupils on these eyes?
Different eye.
Did you notice?
We see his whole iris.
The pupil is close to the middle of
the open part of the eye.
The top and bottom of her iris are
hidden. So her pupil is closer to
the top eyelid.
Eyelids
• Where do they start?
• Where do they end?
• Do they remind you of anything?
Eyelashes
Do eyelashes go straight up/down?
Do they fan out?
Do they start and stop the same place on both eyes?
Can you see individual lashes on both eyes?
Notice how these eyelashes look more
like a thick line.
Bottom Lashes
• Can you see skin of the lower eyelid between the lower lashes and
the whites of the eye?
• Where do the bottom eyelashes start?
Eyebrows
• You don’t need to count the hairs.
• If the eyebrows are light, don’t push hard on the pencil.
Look for:
•Shape, size and position of the
eyebrow
•The length and direction of the hair
Where?
How big?
.
Look for clues.
Look straight down from the end of the eyebrow.
How far away is it from the eye?
Do some trial measuring to find out.
How far up are they?
How thick are they?
Now look for clues of size, shape,
and position to draw the other eye.
Measure the distance between the eyes.
Compare that distance to the size of
the first eye.
Are these eyes one eye apart?
More than one eye apart?
Less than one eye apart?
So I measure how far past the eye it goes.
(yellow line)
And find something the same size.
It was as big as the pupil.
So I measure the eye in my drawing and add the size of the pupil,
And I put a dot that far from the
first eye.
The distance between each
persons eyes is different.
Measure!
Where will it end?
These eyes are the same size.
I measure the first eye and make a mark where the second eye will end.
Now look for clues of shape, size and position to draw the nose.
Draw only the hard edges, not the slopes.
Slopes are done with shading and we are not shading.
His nose lines up with the corners of his eyes.
Many noses are wider.
Measure how far the top of the nostril is from the eye.
Compare it to some part of the eye.
Measure one of those parts on my drawing.
Use it to make marks for how far down the nostrils are.
Notice they start in a little towards the middle
NOT right under the eyes.
I measure from the top of his nostrils to the bottom of his nose and
compare that to some part of his eye.
Some noses are shorter.
Some noses are longer.
You can’t see much of the holes because of the flash from the camera, so
his nose has a weird shape, with a kind of wide V, or a flying bird form.
Draw it the same weird looking way.
It does not look like this.
Or this
What part of the eye is straight up from the corners of his mouth?
Do you see that his smile is bigger on one side?
It is easiest to draw the line between the lips first.
I measured to find something the same size.
You don’t have to remember all these clues.
You LOOK for clues on the person you are drawing.
What does the shape of his top lip remind me of?
What does the shape of the bottom lip remind me of?
What would fit between his
mouth and the edge of his
face?
His eye almost fits.
Notice one side is a little wider
than the other because of his
asymmetrical smile.
Trial measuring found something the
same size as his chin.
The area between his eye and hair
is about as big as the eye, but a
little different on each side.
Where his hair comes on his forehead
is bigger than his chin is long.
I’ll use all that information to
draw the edge of the face.
What lines up with the tops and bottoms of his ears?
The top of his head is kind of cut off, but trial measuring shows there is almost as
much head below his eyes as above.
His eyes are almost in the middle of his head.
The top of his head does not look like this.
And it does not look like this.
It takes two lines to draw the edges of this boy’s hair.
Take another look at the that neck!
What lines up his neck?
People often make mistakes judging the
distance between things.
They think the eyes are wrong
when the problem actually is the nose is too
long.
This was the first time this
middle school girl tried to
draw anything.
She was very upset with
the eyes, but the problem
actually is the too-long
nose.
I don’t let students trace anything but
their own work.
Tracing templates and other people’s work teaches
students negative things:
•You can’t draw.
•Your efforts are not good enough.
•You can’t learn to draw.
But tracing and repositioning parts of
their own drawings saves people of all
ages a lot of frustration.
It also helps them learn to draw
because they see they are not “all
wrong”.
That is what happened here.
When people move their heads or change their expressions,
all the sizes, shapes and positions change.
BUT
You can draw a face from any angle if you always ask:
• What do the shapes remind me of?
• How big is a part compared to other parts?
• Where is a part compared to other parts?
If you want an exact copy of what you
see, just use a copy machine or
camera.
Compare size, shape and position, and
draw your own idea of what you see.
That is what makes it a drawing.
That is what makes it art.
First graders drew two different expressions, looking in a mirror.
Unlike the “proportions of the face” which starts
with the outside shape and uses a formula to fill
in the features,
comparing size, shape and position,
•works from the inside to the outside,
•creates a means of measurement
•allows analysis of the small differences that
make each of us unique.
•and helps people learn to “see”.
The last two slides give info on
criteria that help students create
pleasing compositions so less
skillfully drawn images can make
a very attractive picture.
The following are criteria I set for composition, since my
students can use only an image of one object in a photo
and have to make up the rest of the composition.
These criteria pose problems for students to solve, each in
their own ways. I used them in almost every assignment.
They also help students create unity, balance, emphasis,
value structure, rhythm and movement.
• Overlap
• Let things go off the edge of the paper
• Don’t line things up or stack
• REPEAT things (shapes, values, patterns, colors,
etc.) in different amounts, in different parts of the
page. Change them a little so it is not boring.
• Repeat in Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear
amounts.
• Don’t divide the page in half diagonally, vertically
or horizontally. - Cross the mid-line.
• Group objects.