2.3 The Face
The face is extremely difficult to draw or paint as a unity. It resists connection to the body. It tends to fragment into its features.
One problem is language. Face language is extremely analytic. It separates. It doesn’t seem as strange to say, “First I painted his face and then his body” as to say, “First I painted his arm and then his body.” If one asks, “What comprises a face?” the answer is almost always “eyes, nose and mouth.”
The face is structured through its planes… A crucial pattern, with personal and archetypical resonance, is temples, cheekbones, setting of the eyes, hollow beneath lips and shape of chin. One develops each feature through the pattern of “the whole.
Blood and neural impulses flow, as water through a river, through the neck. The body including the face should be painted as it exists, in dynamic organic interconnection.
From Living Art, Read More Here.
