Daily Sketch 6/30/11-7/1/11

A week of sketching has made me aware of how much I've forgotten. I took out my trusty best guide to the anatomy of the bones and muscles of the human noggin, Gary Faigin's The Artist's Complete Guide to Facial Expression. Years ago I was a monitor in his late afternoon sketch class at the Art Students League, he was a great teacher and I watched me and everyone else—from stick figure beginners to pros—gain the ability to see what they were looking at. We look at faces with our animal brain, so tend to draw larger what is most likely to help or hurt us. All beginners draw anacephalic heads with grievously small craniums and overly large eyes and mouths. As Little Red Riding Hood says "What big teeth you have Granny!" The natural way we draw heads is a map of how our brains process expression. But if you want to do portraits it is good to be able to see the actual topography of the subject and then feel free to distort it any way your artistic soul wants.