Ep. 4 How to Sculpt the Face - Planes of the Head by Sculptor Rick Casali

what's up guys Rick casali here in the studio bringing you that weekly art video and today's discussion will be the plains of the head and there's a lot of different categories when you talk about portraiture as I mentioned in my previous videos on the figure you have the anatomy but then the ways we organize the anatomy in an artistic sense is establishing the the pose the action right in this case a seated or standing portrait is a vertical it has a few diagonal axis ease to the to the portrait that we've talked about in the previous figurative videos you have the proportional sense of the anatomy so we mentioned the halfway point on the figure the halfway point of the skull will be the inside corner of the eye generally speaking okay so from the from the chin to the very top of the head the halfway point will be the inside corner of the eyes inside point of the eyes are are generally a little bit lower than the outside corner although there are exceptions some people have the opposite so you have the pose in other words the direction of the figure the other proportions of the figure you have the organic rhythms and I discussed you know long linear organic rhythms you can you can look at the teachings of Frank Riley for that maybe the from the back of the head flowing into the chest that's a good organic rhythm linear rhythm you could also go what's another good one you could go from from maybe this downward plane of the nasal eminence see how that relates to the front of the neck that's a good relationship and there there's others and you can you can discover your own as you're studying so that's rhythms and then the final and I think the most vital way to organize gross anatomy is the geometry so again these are all different systems you need to to have in your toolbox to make a successful portrait or figure these are systems to organize gross anatomy and again gross anatomy is the muscles the bones the tendons the ligaments the fat pads the glands all those fancy things that that people want to dive into right I mean one of the main distractions with the portrait is the eyes and that's that's natural because when we look at somebody we like to look at their face and then we look into their eyes so it's it's normal that you would focus on the eyeball but let's try to think about the eyeball is not the focus but as in a structural sense it's kind of the cherry on top it's a jewel amongst a landscape of a beautiful coordinated solid form okay because you can have a beautiful eye but if the eyes are out of whack you know once deeper than the other they're not related side to side in an organic figure-eight what's the point you know then you're just a Picasso so you know you could argue that a lot of the 20th century isms which Picasso was part of those were simply artists that you know they were sort of swept up in the times and they were celebrated for their failure failures for their bad habits you know so it's a Picasso tended to things wonky oh that's his style if Giacometti made things really tall and skinny that was just his style so he became famous for that now that worked in the 20th century I don't think it flies anymore to be honest so you have to look at that which isms stand the test of time and I think it'll be interesting to look back on the 20th century all right not to get off on a tangent let's get back to the the matter at hand the geometry of the head so I think the best book for this I'll just say right up front is the human figure by John Boehner pole he just really has all the geometry for the figure he has the geometry for the limbs the arms and legs and also the geometry for the head now you can see over here on the left a very small geometric drawing and it's a shame they're so small so what I would do is take this image scan it blow it up and really study that you can even shade in the planes so here's this nice diamond cut head and there are some other examples in here here's another one this is a drawing you did of his daughter very beautiful drawing and maybe that's his wife ought to check I think it's his daughter here's another one you can see that sort of cutting the head like a diamond into these triangular and trapezoidal planes so I've attempted to do my own version here and you know I think you can learn something from from every artist there's not just one way to break it down but you'll notice there are Universal planes that show up again and again again whether it be the Greeks whether it be Michelangelo or there would be Bernini you get into Rodin and daga they're all using kind of the same the same system just manifested in slightly different ways there'll be little variations but generally speaking they're all part of that that brotherhood or sisterhood of artists where they're standing on the shoulders of who came before them and I think that's one of the exciting things about being an artist is it connects you to the past and different types of heads are going to reveal themselves differently they're gonna reveal different parts of the geometric system so without going into history too much let's just address some of these major Plains concerning the geometry of the head so a lot of art books will make the head into an egg shape and I think that egg is probably the best summary of the head it's an egg in the sense that we have a very big brain right big brain case cranial mass then we have a very narrow chin so the unique thing about being human among other things is that our our brains are big and advanced complex you don't have this great power to reason but then our faces are are not really for hunting and killing things our faces are sort of delicate and beautiful and they serve as as basically a communication center and the reason I bring up you other mammals it's because if you look at it maybe the skull of a bear or a deer or a tiger you'll see they have a smaller brain and they have an enormous muzzle right a killing mechanism so I think comparative anatomy of animals is is interesting and worth doing because when it does is it it really shows the essence of what we are and that is a flaring a chicken egg right a bird egg for Arbor Day in a sense that we taper to the chin not a human egg which is round but a bird egg turned up on its end so when you look at the skull to here's a pretty good plastic skull you can see that flare from the chin to the cheekbones up to the trial eminence the parietal eminence is the widest part of the head way up here so it's that parietal process on the parietal bones the high point of the Prado bone so I think the egg is good you can also equate the head to a block and George Bridgman in his books he's very good doing that he makes the head into a block I think the block is also a good way to think about it however we're not strictly a block with right angles you know for instance this edge it's not a right angle it's it's more it's more obtuse than that it's more opened up but the good thing about a block is it makes you define six planes remember a cube has six sides a front atop two deep sides of back and then an underneath playing I think that underneath plane is probably the the most ignored may be the back of the head too so maybe I'll touch on that today so in the theme of the block and the spirit of the block you're gonna want to divide the the top from the side and you can see it on the skull it's gonna happen along this this landmark here which is called the temporal bridge this is the temporal Ridge it's great you're temporalis muscle it's gonna be attaching you know to that corner and if you know if you equate the head to a house this is the rooftop like a dome or a gable roof and see on him it's more like a peak if this is a house this is the roof this is the side this is the facade your temporal Ridge is like the gutters of the house so that starts to divide the top from the side and even in a portrait where you have a lot of hair I'm thinking of the Pearl Earring girl with the Pearl Earring by Vermeer she's wearing a turban but you still see the light shade breaking on that temporal Ridge so again these things are timeless and universal and it's important to know them especially when things are subtle or obscured by hair or drapery because what you want to do is turn that that UPS obscurity is there word that hair or drapery and did not a hydro form but into an accentuate or a form so a lot of contemporary artists they think oh someone's got a beard or they got a bunch of hair or a bunch of drapery or the sand and waves at the feet but that's a good way to hide you know I don't have to deal with with the form well I would challenge that and say instead of think in that way think how does this beard reveal the form underneath next week I'm going to be doing a portrait sculpture of Michael Shane Neil the great portrait painter in Nashville and you can still get tickets for that just go to go to my Instagram page and he has a beard so I'm gonna be confronted with that challenge I've done it before but it's never easy having a beard on top of the geometry and how does that accentuate the plains so don't think of those things as as things that hide it on you think of them as things that accentuate what's underneath because like I said in the previous video the skeleton is the Great Dictator of all the anatomy it's the superstructure it's the framework and a head is nearly all sculpt I mean you have some muscles and fat on the face but essentially a lot of your head is your skull coming to the surface especially in your forehead your eye sockets your nasal bone cheekbones your teeth right your teeth are a part of your skeleton and you know when people get orthodontia it affects their profile that's something that they'll always show look how we're going to change your your profile so don't neglect the teeth sometimes when I can't understand someone's mouth I will request that they show me their teeth and I'll check out the teeth okay so we have a division between top and side also a division between front and side so this this this division between the front and side will essentially go down a temporal Ridge imaginarily down the zygomaticus major and then swings in to the chin so I've got some little ins and outs for the eye socket already but when I start ahead I might just make this one simple plane versus this plane maybe you'll mitt the nose in the beginning so again for clarity you're gonna you know swing up around the back of the cranial mass along the temporal Ridge turn a little more vertically and then go into this zygomaticus major which in a visual sense unites with the triangularis muscle and then swings in to the side of that chin bone so you'll see that a lot you'll see this kind of classic division between the front and side on a lot of your paintings and sculptures and you know I'll draw some lines today to help illustrate it I hope it's clear in the video but ultimately you want the plains to tell the story you know you want the the plains to do the talking not the line between the plains so the challenge is you know if you blur the line is the plains still there that's a good question yeah so my teacher had my teachers teachers Henry Henchy would always say every form change is a color change and you can debate that there are different schools of a painting but another way to say is that reform change could be a value shift so again the top of the heads brighter than the side of the head this this is the light this is going into a halftone eventually you go under the chin that's a that's a shadow so every form change is a color change so you have that temporal bridge swinging into the chin that's gonna divide front from side and then you'll also have a break between the front and the top of the head and I'm gonna outline it again because it's something that that can be very kind of slurred here you know there's not like an edge necessarily here on this plane but there there will be a good turning edge here at the top of what's called the frontal eminences so instead of obsessing about this edge I would be more you know put more emphasis on this being the frontal plane of that of that forehead because this is more of a corner than this this is kind of sliding in and you can get it get a skull for yourself to understand the frontal eminence is and the nasal eminence is and how they equate to this quadrant on the front of the forehead so these are the frontal eminences these the nasal eminences and together they make that trapezoid box that's the true front of the face these two little planes are sliding on so think of these not as front or side but kind of in between planes and when you're doing a painting or sculpture you'll often times notice that these are in a halftone they're sliding off into the into the dark whereas this will be real crisp and shiny here you have a sort of bird-like shape triangular plane on the bottom of that nasal eminence so I always observe that halftone could be a shadow if the lights above and observe how how the the tail end of this nasal eminence is gonna ride up and over this little piece down here so you have what we get into which is called wedging or Doug tailing a form where one form is is sneaking under another and there they're sort of passing each other and that's how that's how natural form works it it doesn't just butt up against each other it instead interlocks with one another okay so that's that's another concept before you called wedging when you get into modeling three-dimensional form that is coordinated you'll have to address how how the parts fit together how does the cheek fit into the jaw section okay so so that's a brief overview of the forehead you can see how the the nasal bone is locked right up into that nasal eminence and I'll I'll leave the nose alone for now let's get into the facial planes this is probably what people really want so again the main one is that temporal Ridge sliding into the zygomaticus major triangularis slide through the chin now you come over to the side of the head you'll have what's called the zygomatic arch which is the widest part of the face remember this is the face this is the whole head while as part of the heads up here so don't confuse the two that's pride Alumnus this is the zygomatic arch the widest part of the face will be the zygomatic arch towards the back so you want to follow this getting wider and wider and wider and then right there you can feel on yourself before you hit the sideburn it'll be the widest and then it's going to dip in towards your ear canal so you can feel it on yourself right behind your sideburn it's gonna dip in that's the widest part of the whole face so that zygomatic arch or cheekbone is important because it adds to the flare of the face you don't want a boxy round face like a circle or box you want a triangulated face that's more like a trapezoid so so the cheekbones add to the flare of the of the face the ears add to the flare of the face and the parietal eminence really add to the flare of the whole head as it goes up towards that big brain so remember little tiny face chin big brain you could think of this whole thing as a cone my teacher ceedric eglee always described this as a cone coming down maybe a cone coming up to this point he's very into geometry thankfully so another claim you can add you know the zygomatic arch will have that top plane the orbit of the eye will cut back for that peripheral vision so you get a little bit of interruption to this plane that's why I use your imagination you have to see how it connects to the chin and then you'll have a top plane to the zygomatic what's called this Z zygomatic one you have a downward plane which is trapezoidal z - I'm just making up these names you can make up your own and then come to the front you could call this a z3 you know it's like a frontal plane of the zygomatic and you'll have a little top plane this could be for that little like boomerang shaped top plane okay this is all housing for the eyeball so it's not so again it's not so much the eyeball as it is sculpting all this form around the well here's that powder outer edge at that war bit I'm sure there's a name for that sort of have this this is a confusing little area you have this this little flange kind of kind of like a buttress coming up to meet that corner so this will go from our vertical and then it'll turn under or this downward plane the lacrimal gland is so this is a very rich Comdex triangular plane then you'll get a lot of depth and maybe you could argue a concavity here there's a couple more little intricacies there to the to the eye socket but I want to stick to the bigger planes on this video but you can see how how that zygomatic arch is very important to the width of the face and then coming off the bottom of zygomatic arch you have what's called the masseter muscle so I'll put them here for masseter okay that's like you can think of that as a chewing muscle running from your zygomatic to your mandible to the jaw so we could think of this in zones here this is a temple t-this is the masseter and then look what's created here between the front plane and the massive area this little little in-between plane I'll call this eye for him between TMI too much this could also be an in-between plane because it's the reason I'm calling them in between our corner planes is because they don't face to the front of the side they face to the corners so maybe it's better to call them corner plans but TMI is kind of funny so there's TMI the front of this eye socket will separate from the the cheek form coming down and again this this this cheap form gets a lot of attention usually a beginning art student just focus on that so instead of focusing on that what I really want you to do is focus on this plane more and I pulled out my Dagon book I loved a guy's sculptures and I use a painter mostly but great sculptor and it's really clear on this little little ballerina this dancer figure that there is a clear distinction between that the top of the head being shiny and then the smoky under plane along that zygomatic flowing into the upper lip and my teachers ceedric eglee always called this the equator of the head in the sense that your head divides into two hemispheres there's an upper hemisphere that faces up and a downward hemisphere and the face is down into the dark so what I'm talking about is this and this this is something you can carry all the way to the back of the head so that that little edge there I do a line just to make it clear this is gonna follow the zygomaticus minor muscle and I think this plane gets ignored a lot that's why I'm gonna emphasize it I'm gonna try to understand you need to be fixed out in the world there so you have the zygomaticus minor muscle breaking the top from the bottom so on a lot of portraits you'll notice everything south of that that zygomaticus minor will be going into a halftone or a shadow going under into the dark and I think in this Vanderpool book you know he's got this drawing here really beautiful head you can see that that see from her cheekbones under we're getting a smoky world down there and you can definitely see it on his on his description of the plans so so from the cheekbone you have a little system of planes that radiates you have the the cheekbone to the front of the masseter the cheekbone to the front to the psycho Matic is major triangularis combo then you have the cheekbone to the upper lip which is like America's Minor so the net result of that will be like a shinier little accent you know right under the nose at the top of the teeth and then the whole eye socket cheekbone region will be a little brighter and snappier and this will be softer and warmer and deeper in color I think what confuses people is that the chin and the lips kind of pop out a little bit so they'll tend to make the mouth come forward too much whereas this whole plane is going back so remember that the upper teeth generally speaking are in front of lower teeth so from the philtrum this is the filk in this little divot above your upper lip going into the nose you can look at Vanderpool for this this is going to create the front plane of the mouth and it basically goes from a philtrum through the peaks of the upper lip through the width of the lower lip and then imaginarily you have to go you know again use your imagination to the width of the chin the front plane of the chin this is gonna make sort of a you can look in his book but it makes it makes like a little triangle front plane and that's sort of it that's that's the real front of the face you know again this this quadrant of the frontal armor is nasal ominous the front plane of the nose and then this this little triangular front plane of the mouth getting wider as it goes down everything from this Ridge will start to break away go back and away from the front of the face or down under away from the zygomaticus minor muscle so my teacher ceedric eglee called this the keel of the face you know we live in Maryland so we're on the Chesapeake Bay there's a lot of boats and you know talk about boat building is not unusual and his father built boats so he always talked about this as the keel of the face you don't know what a keel is on a boat it's the bottom the weighted piece in the bottom of the boat that keeps the boat from tipping over there's that big piece that comes off so again this is the keel to face and sort of ignore this little cheap fleshy cheek form for a second in service to this grander equator of the head that breaks the northern hemisphere from the southern hemisphere and again you can follow it all the way back the zygomatic and then up into this parietal eminence so and there's more to it than that but I thought that'd be a good introduction you can't learn all this from a video but you can learn a lot from a video I learned from watching old VHS tapes of my teachers teach and but there's notes there's no substitute for putting in the hours yourself attending workshops and you know getting your hands into the clay to really understand these these geometric planes and their orientation in space so I'm teaching some finger workshops this January here in Maryland and also in Tampa Florida I'll teach my my portrait workshop every August here at my private studio you can see the light is quite good and it's usually the first two weeks of August and we work on heads you know for four or five days in a row work on the same head and that's always always a really enriching fun time so you can check out my website for those those events and I'll try to put a link in the description I also have Plains heads for sale on my website so I'll try to put a link for that too alright see you next week

Channel: Rick Casali

Views: 49,890

Keywords: sculpture, sculpt, how to sculpt head, planes of the head, clay, portrait bust, skull, artistic, anatomy, portraiture, artist, studio, rick casali, art tutorial, free, how to sculpt eyes, how to sculpt skull, how to sculpt face

Id: nZx_xUDuWgc

Length: 32min 50sec (1970 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 17 2019