Guidelines for Pencil Portrait Sketching - Establishing Head Landmarks

A pencil portrait drawing from life starts with the "striking" of the arabesque. Striking the arabesque means drawing the outer contour of the head with the correct proportions, shape, and thecorrect symmetry.

Once you have drawn a reasonably correct arabesque it is time to locate the main landmarks of the head. That means that we will appropriately locate the most significant places of the head. These places will then be used as references for mapping out the rest of the head features.

Here is something that may help you with this task: work with your eyes somewhat out-of-focus. This is called seeing with a "soft eye". Somehow this makes it easier to appropriately decide forms and sizes. It also helps you with suppressing the set notions we all have of certain entities.

Let us imagine that we are working from a three-quarter head profile.

* The Brow Ridge - is the first significant landmark. To place the brow ridge you must first take your best estimate at where you think it is and only then test it by sighting.

Note that to coach your eyes it is better to first estimate lengths, angles, etc. and verify them second. There is nothing to gain from pre- sighting.

Sighting signifies to use your pencil with locked arm and marking lengths along the pencil with your thumb and index finger and one eye closed.

So then, first sight from the bottom of the chin to a point on the brow ridge (just choose an random point on the ridge. But once chosen you should hold on to it.

Now raise your pencil so that your thumb is on your point on the brow ridge and note where your pencil tip is. It should be a tiny distance above the top of the head. Mark on your drawing where you can best place that spot above the head. This point is called the "check-point".

Note that whenever there is a choice, you should always measure the smallest distance because doing so tends to be more accurate.

Your point on the brow ridge should, if it was placed appropriately, be exactly halfway between the bottom of the chin and your check-point. If it is not then improve the placement of your brow ridge.

* Jaw Hinge - Now you can fix the width of the face. In the three-quarter pose the hinge of the jaw is an essential landmark. Again, take your best estimate then check by sighting horizontally from the hinge of the jaw to the far edge of the cheek bone and vertically relating that measure from the bottom of the chin.

* Top Nasal Bone - Since we have already positioned the brow ridge we now only have to guess a short measure to find the top of the nose bone. If you placed the hinge of the jaw appropriately, it should equal the measure from the bottom of the chin to the nose bone. If you are off a bit, then correct the placement of the hinge of the jaw. Again, imagine that the smallest length estimated is the accurate one.

Now that these prime landmarks are positioned you can further work out the arabesque. I find it best to further resolve only the back, less, part of the head at this early time.

* Facial Angle - Lastly, you need to locate the facial angle which is the center line of the face. Sketch a slightly arching line from the middle of the mental tubercle up through the center of the brow ridge.

The placement of the facial angle is very significant. You have to feel your way through this as there is no way to rightly measure it.

Once the facial angle is positioned proceed with resolving the arabesque carefully observing the shape of the mouth region, the forehead, and all other features that are expressed in the shape of the arabesque.

With this, we have positioned all the essential landmarks that will help us with the mapping of the rest of the features such as the ears and nose.