Heads, Features and Faces This book is very helpful - there are basic instructions and rules to apply to drawing the head, specific features of the head and the face. The information contained within is very valuable, plus the visual images are exceptionally instructive to the student of portraiture.Heads, Features and Faces
Short, but very good book of techniques For the price, I don't think you can get a better book on drawing human heads. Bridgman illustrates a structural approach to the head and its features. (I agree that his language it sometimes a bit difficult to follow, but the sketches show everything you need to know about his technique).
The book covers basic proportions of the head, an introduction about how to approach the head as a series of planes, how to draw the eyes, nose, ears, and mouth in a structural way, a brief comparision of adult to child head proportions, and an introduction to how to draw the heads at different perspectives.
Overall, it's a short book, but it's packed with valuable techniques that have definitely improved my portrait drawings.
This would be a start for me to explore and capture some facial expressions when drawing pictures of people. I'm an artist and I want to take my artwork to a higher ground and this book would be the template for future drawings.
Great for beginners! This really isn't an *in-depth* book- Very slim & brief, it's definitely great for a quick intro to the basics... Bridgman gets right into it: starting with the basic outline, he proceeds to planes and basic shading, then follows with a decent look at the various features we all need to be familiar with. Eyes, nose, mouth & ears are simply & accurately treated. Basic proportions are touched upon. This is actually great material for beginners (recommended!), in contrast to his usual intermediate-level stuff. With *very high* paper quality (thank you!!!), the drawings here seem to be a bit more clear than in his other books. Stylistically speaking, this is very different & interesting for Bridgman. He actually displays representations of various famous figures: Vermeer of Delft; Frans Hals; Sir Joshua Reynolds; Rembrandt Van Ryn; George Washington; Abraham Lincoln; and Louise Elisabeth LeBrun. This tends to be my least favorite aspect of the book, although the accompanying text is actually sometimes pretty interesting. Miscellaneous drawings here also include: men; women; children; a chef; a clown; a small Leonardo Da Vinci self-portrait sketch; and Jolly St. Nick a.k.a. Santa Claus. I kinda like these miscellaneous drawings! Like I said, this is all *very* different from his usual, uniquely-conceived, figure drawing efforts. Facial expressions are barely touched upon. This is a basic-level book in pretty much every single respect. He describes *introductory* methods of construction in the last few pages- perspective, cube-construction & oval construction. This book will *not* teach you to construct heads from every conceivable point of view from memory. For a more detailed look at constructing heads from memory, check out his truly excellent & more famous works: Constructive Anatomy and Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing From Life. Bridgman is famous for his cube-construction of the head, but we only get a little of it in these very brief pages. Great for beginners! Also great & more *in-depth*, 5-star works for beginners: Drawing the Head and Figure by Jack Hamm, and Andrew Loomis' Drawing: The Head. All currently available here on Amazon!
Awkwardly worded but still interesting The art, in my person opinion, is rather ugly but it serves it's purpose. I did have a problem with the wording. It was often too technical and a bit awkward. The sentence structure was a bit odd. I guess the point of the writing style was to be different and not seem oversimplific. However it was not simple enough. A book like this should be simple and easy to understand. I also think there are some terms that should have been clarified or defined but they were not. I got the impression that this book was not aimed at beginners but more at intermediates who were familiar with some of the terminology. Don't get me wrong, the terminology was not that difficult to guess the meaning of, but it did detract from my enjoyment of the book. I am just not fond of this particular style of writing. Other people may like it. And the book has some valuable information. Mildly recommended.
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