Melissa 17 December 2017

Today it is Sunday 17 December 2017. Today everything was different. I went to Amsterdam together with my wife. We planned to take the train as I usually take but it was canceled. Instead, we took an earlier train and we went to Amsterdam Zuid where we went different ways. I took bus 15 and she took a Metro. She was on her way to a wool spinning event. It is cold but sunny, really beautiful weather actually.

Because we went together I did not write on my blog as I usually do. We chatted and talked about various things as we usually do.

When I arrived in Amsterdam the door was opened to the studio but that was because of that Bastiaan had a workshop in making ceramic insect houses.

I could enter and then I started blogging at the studio. I noticed she had already put al easels in the correct spot so perhaps she had planned to come late.

Then arrived Tom and Frank but no Saskia. Well not long after Saskia arrived. Saskia was celebrating her birthday today.

Artists Ferry, Tom, Frank, Saskia and me. The model was Melissa.

Frustrated about the book I reread the section about the portraiture and I found the place about how to measure. It is one sentence only. The most pivotal sentence of the book. It says you should compare the relative size of the features in the face. Perhaps you cannot write more about the subject but on the front cover, the book says Portraits.

There are a couple of takeaways from the book though. It starts by showing a box with a couple of lines. I can see myself make such a box too. I would mount it on a tripod so that you could raise it or lower it, swivel around. Make it look up or down and so on. Then it talks about drawing an egg-shaped ellipse but it is carefully pointing out that this only serves the purpose of placing the head in the layout of the canvas. Next, a cross is drawn. A horizontal line where the eyes are, paying attention to the perspective of course. Then a vertical line or rather a curve following the face if the head is drawn from ever so slightly on the side. Then the width of the eyes are compared to the height measured from glabella and downwards. The width of eyes compared to the height of mouth etc. is giving very much of the likeliness. There is band from glabella and down that is especially important for likeliness and especially the following measurements:

From the inner hook of the eye to the nose wings.
From the nose wings to right under the nose.
From the right under the nose to the top of the lips.

For the rest, the book points out that common pitfalls can be to make less interesting sections smaller and more interesting sections bigger. The chin for example.

The hooks of the mouth often line up with the pupils. There is often one third:

from the chin to the under the nose
from under the nose to glabella
from glabella to the hair.

There is often one eye distance between the eyes.

The face is often one hand palm big.

That is it. If I can digest this and make something of this then I will make good progress in likeness!

I moved from Sweden to The Netherlands in 1995.

Here on this site, you find my creations because that is what I do. I create.