Learning Portrait Drawing: Lesson 1 – Introduction
THE HUMAN HEAD
MONSIEUR BERTILLON, ANTHROPOLOGIST
Paris, one afternoon in 1879.
At the Prefecture of Police, an officer places a pistol on the Prefect’s desk and, pointing to a prisoner, says:
—Marcel Dupont, armed robbery.
The Prefect looks at the prisoner: he is a robust man with a broad face, reddish hair, and a flattened nose… If this is the first time Dupont has broken the law, the sentence will be light; if he is a repeat offender, the punishment must be very severe.
—Have him sent to Monsieur Bertillon, orders the Prefect.
Monsieur Bertillon is a humble clerk who, three months earlier, proposed a new system for identifying offenders. It is based on photographs and body measurements. Now, while trying to find Dupont’s face in his files, Bertillon recalls with anguish the Prefect’s last words: “All right. But prove it!” he had said, very irritated, “and if in three months you have no results, forget these silly ideas once and for all!”… Suddenly, Bertillon pulls out a card; he looks at it trembling and runs to the Prefect’s office:
—This is not Dupont, Sir! It is Martin, the murderer who escaped before being tried. He disfigured himself and dyed his hair, but he could not change his bone structure!
That afternoon in February 1879 marked the discovery of a new branch of anthropology, the science that studies the human being in its double physical and moral aspect. Alphonse Bertillon himself called this new field: “anthropometry.”
Anthropometry studies the measurement of the dimensions and proportions of the human body or one of its parts.
Dimensions, proportions, human body…? This concerns us, the artists. Let us see why:
ANTHROPOMETRY APPLIED TO ART
Indeed, anthropometry has a direct connection with the art of placing, constructing, and drawing the human body. In principle, it shows us that no body is identical to another. In the study of the variations that can appear for an ear, for example, anthropometry lists twenty different cases which, combined with five nose shapes and seven different eye colours, give an infinity of possible combinations. Until now, this has served no other purpose than to make us understand that when drawing Jean we have a problem of dimensions different from the one we have when drawing Pierre.
But fortunately, anthropometry has done something more for us: at the same time as morphology and anatomy, it has determined the proportions of thousands of bodies by comparing races, sexes and ages; it has studied the measurements used by painters and sculptors of all times; in short, it has enabled today’s artist to know better the dimensions and proportions of the human body.
The scholar Von Lange, to cite only one example of this complicated study, counted the height of a million men, revealing that 300,000 of them measure on average 165 cm, 400,000 measure 175 cm and 300,000 more than 175 cm. The same Lange fixed the height of the head at 22.5 cm, noting that it is the most constant part of the body — between 21 and 24 cm. Among others, Richer, Stratz and Fritsch have carried out countless comparative studies between modern man and the most important sculptures of Greek and contemporary art; they have thus scientifically determined the natural canon and the artistic canon of man.
This will serve us enormously, as we shall see:
THE CANON OF THE HUMAN HEAD
To learn to draw a head, a face, a portrait, we must begin by studying the general dimensions and proportions of the human head. To determine these proportions, scholars and artists use the canon.
By CANON we mean the rule or system that determines and relates the proportions and dimensions of the human body, starting from a basic measurement called MODULE.
As an example of this definition, look at the opposite figure no. 1, which reproduces the proportions of the human body according to a canon of eight heads, drawn by Albert Dürer, a German artist of the sixteenth century. (Here, the module or basic measurement is the height of the head.)
The canon, or rule of proportions, is the result of comparative studies (such as those mentioned above) that determine the ideal proportions from a natural point of view — for the normal man — or from an artistic point of view — if they are modified to create a type more representative of the artistic beauty of the human body.
The canon will provide us with precious help for the double operation of proportioning and constructing.
THE IDEAL PROPORTIONS OF THE HUMAN HEAD
Let us imagine a head with ideal proportions, which belongs to no one in particular and which is at the same time a representative model of all heads. Let us observe it from the front and from the side, as it would appear on the cards of the famous Monsieur Bertillon (figures 2 and 3).
You have seen it well? We are now going to study the canon that I used to draw it.
Read and look carefully; do not be distracted; the study that follows is a formula that will allow you, from today onwards, with the help of the other explanations in these articles, to draw a head with the same ease with which you already draw a vase or a chair. I also advise you to have a pencil and paper at hand to practise and remember these data better…
Have you tried this? Have you managed to draw a head according to this canon? Isn’t it easy?
But do not limit yourself to drawing it only once. Repeat these different operations several times, until you can really do them from memory, without looking at the previous illustrations. This is the first step to take — necessary and indispensable — to learn to draw a head, a face, to make a portrait.
Ready for Lesson 2? In the next article we will continue directly with the complete canon and the step-by-step construction of the head. Practice the module proportions shown today and we will build on them! 🎨
See you in Lesson 2: The Canon of the Human Head in Detail.
This series is based on the timeless techniques of José M. Parramón’s “Comment dessiner une tête et faire un portrait” (How to Draw a Head and Create a Portrait).