Head and portrait
The construction of the skull, how the head sits, the features of the face and a long portrait. From the first proportions to a head that stands in space and looks like a particular person.
Lessons in this category come with the Basic plan — $12 a month. Choose a plan
Lessons in “Head and portrait”
subscribers only3:48Timelapse. A color portrait of a lady with braids
Hi everyone! Today I invite you to watch the process of making one interesting portrait. And not just watch, but follow along and bring something of your own to it. We start with a graphic sketch and then add color. As I’ve said before, portraits like this are more decorative, so don’t be afraid to experiment and put unusual colors into the drawing. Thanks for watching and for the support! At the end of the week, expect the continuation of the video lesson with the anatomy breakdown of the male figure (yes, that one — the multi-part, very detailed one :) ps. So you can join right now instead of waiting for August 1 ;)
subscribers only2:26How to draw a portrait: materials from the marathon (19 teaching videos)
Hi! I’m really glad you’ve decided to study all the subtleties of portrait drawing with me. There are 12 topics ahead, 10 of them video lessons and timelapses, and two of them free. During the marathon the rule was: one week, one piece — now you can draw at your own comfortable pace :) Below I’ve briefly announced each topic. Start with the very first one and gradually move on to the harder assignments, or jump straight to whatever looks coolest. Program of the "Portrait" marathon Topic 1. Drawing the bones of the skull. I show how to build a sound construction and how to use a graphic device for greater expression. Topic 2. Drawing the skull. I tell you the neat tricks that make the main principles of drawing skulls easy to remember. For example, we’ll find the Eiffel Tower in the skull! Topic 3. Drawing the parts of the face. As is tradition, we don’t just copy from life or from a photo reference — we learn to analyze the form, break it down into simple modules, and draw thoughtfully. Topic 4. Drawing a plaster head. I show what to watch for when drawing a plaster head, including how to depict casts with damage — cracks and chips (that’s always interesting!). Topic 5. Drawing a portrait of an elderly man in ¾. We’ll draw from the mass, or rather from the silhouette — old men often have beards, unruly hair, sideburns, and so on. We’ll try to catch and convey the character of an old man: whether he’s a mean old man, a wise elder, or a kind, warm-hearted grandpa is up to you! Topic 6. Drawing a portrait of an elderly man in profile. We work in balance: looking for expressive forms and stylizing, while also attending to construction, proportions, and details. We’ll pay special attention to the ear and the nose ;) The thing is, those are exactly the parts that keep growing all through life! Which means they become even more expressive with age — and of course that’s beautiful. Topic 7. Drawing a male portrait in ¾. First I explain and show how you search for the angle and the idea, and what goes into building the character of a portrait. Then, out of the sketches, I pick an English football hooligan who works as a dockhand at the port, and draw him in more detail. Topic 8. Drawing a male portrait in profile. This assignment is about creative freedom! The only constraint: it has to be a man, and it has to be in profile. Everything else is up to your imagination — pick photos of your favorite actors as a reference, draw friends and relatives, catch random passers-by and ask them to pose (a joke, but also not a joke). Topic 9. Drawing a female portrait. Over the course of the video lesson I talk a lot about keeping the construction right, showing the breaks of the form, and adding interesting details and touches at the final stage of working up so the portrait looks more alive. Topic 10. Drawing a female portrait in profile. For this assignment the timelapse and the video lesson are completely different — I draw two different women. All so it’s more interesting for you :) In the commentary on the video lesson I share my secrets as usual, show how to catch the proportions in a profile view, and explain, for example, how the skull and the hairstyle are connected. I also explain why you shouldn’t render every last little detail of your piece to perfection. Topic 11. Drawing a portrait of an elderly woman in ¾. In this lesson I explain how to show the changes of age in a female portrait, how to keep the proportions, work with value, and depict the features of the face so they sit harmoniously together. Topic 12. Drawing a portrait of an elderly woman in profile. You’re all super independent artists now, so there won’t be any extra hints. Except one: use your imagination and apply every skill you’ve picked up in this marathon. You’ve already done great!
subscribers only15:07Graphic color portraits
You asked, and I delivered! Today I have a video lesson for you on making a graphic color portrait: we’ll concentrate on the color specifically and skim over the drawing part a little. This portrait is more decorative and less observational, so it allows some liberties, and I’ll be putting unusual colors into the drawing. Thanks for watching and for the support!
subscribers only14:47Drawing the skull
Hi! Today it’s a fascinating series about drawing the skull. You can draw with whatever materials suit you — an iPad works, a graphics tablet works, and so do traditional materials (with the last of those I recommend watching the video first and only then drawing). In the first episode we’ll sketch the skull in interaction with its surroundings. We start from the mass and work in black and white. In the second episode we’ll take the skull apart bone by bone. We use the still life from the previous video as the base, only now we focus entirely on the construction. In the third episode you’ll find out what the mysterious abbreviations f.e., h.l. and p.e. stand for (frontal eminences, hairline, parietal eminences), and you’ll find a well-fed seagull and a bottle hidden in the construction of the skull. But the main thing is that I’ll show you how to sort out the proportions, and even how to distort them so the result is expressive but still sound.
About “Head and portrait”
The section is built around a single question: how to draw a face so that it belongs to a head with volume and not to a flat sheet of paper. There are 52 classes here. Long lessons of an hour and a half to two hours, where the head is built from the skull and carried through to value; separate lessons on the features; short timelapses that show only the sequence of moves; recordings of the teaching streams from the marathon on drawing women. The subjects vary: a plaster Venus and the head of Gattamelata in profile and in three-quarter view, a woman’s portrait head-on, a child’s portrait, the face of an older person.
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After these classes a portrait no longer starts with an eye. First you lay in the cranium and the facial mass, set the axis of tilt and the turn, check where the back of the skull has gone, and only then look for where the eye sockets sit. Portrait drawing stops depending on whether the first contour happened to land well: when construction holds the proportions, you can redo any detail twenty times and the head will not drift.
It usually breaks in the same places. The skull gets drawn small: the facial mask takes up almost the whole oval, a strip is left for the cranium, and the head ends up looking like a mask on a stick. Then comes the eye, drawn as an almond-shaped sign instead of a ball that sits in the socket and is covered by a lid of noticeable thickness. In the lessons on drawing eyes this is worked out through the ball and the set of the lid; the nose is built through three planes and the base instead of tracing the wings of the nostrils; the ear is placed by level between the brow line and the base of the nose, at an angle that repeats the ramus of the jaw. In three-quarter view there is a separate check that the far half of the face has foreshortened rather than stayed a mirror copy of the near one.
If you have come here for the first time, the order goes like this. “How to draw the head in construction”, then “A woman’s portrait head-on for beginners”, then the separate lessons on the eyes and the nose. After that it is worth taking on a plaster head: it has no expression and no living skin, so every miss in the step-by-step construction of the head comes out into the open and you see it without being told. Watch the timelapses later, as a way of glimpsing somebody else’s order of work rather than as a lesson.
What is not here. There will be no schemes along the lines of “draw an oval and divide it into three parts”, and no anime stylization. Nobody promises you a likeness on the first attempt. Likeness appears when the proportions and the character of the form are right, and that takes months of regular work. Access to the lessons comes with a subscription, and references are attached so that you draw the same setup instead of hunting for a similar photo in a search engine.
FAQ
Where do I start if I have never drawn a portrait?
Take “How to draw the head in construction” and do not move on until you have drawn the construction at least ten times from different angles. Then “A woman’s portrait head-on for beginners”, filmed as exactly that, a first portrait. The features come third, separately from the head as a whole.
Do I need to know the anatomy of the skull to draw portraits?
You need the artistic part of it: where the skull comes up under the skin and sets the form. The zygomatic arches, the brow ridge, the angles of the lower jaw, the temporal hollows. The section has classes on the skull and on the muscles of the face. Nobody memorizes Latin there, you look at what is visible on a living head.
Can I work from a photograph rather than from life?
Yes, most of the lessons are done from a reference, and it is attached to the lesson. A photograph distorts perspective and eats the halftone, so the classes point out separately what you should not take from a reference. The plaster heads in this section are there precisely so that your eye does not get used to photographic form alone.
Do the lessons work for a graphics tablet?
Yes, construction and proportion do not depend on the material. Some classes are filmed digitally, some in pencil and soft media. There is also digital painting of the portrait separately, if that is the technique you are after.
How long is one class?
The long lessons run from 90 to 170 minutes, the short lessons on individual features from 12 to 40, and the timelapses from one to twelve minutes. The long ones assume that you are drawing along with the video, not watching it straight through.
Head and portrait — how Azat draws it
Works by Azat Nurgaleev on the subject of this category: not an illustration to a lesson, but what the lessons lead to.
Portrait on blue 
Gentleman in a bowler hat 
Young woman in white 
Young woman in a shawl 
Portrait on yellow 
Young woman in gray