(upbeat pop music)
-: Hi there, I'm Janet Fagan, and we are gonna do a project
exploring value on the face and head.
So with portraiture you always have a model there.
And that's you.
So today we're gonna be looking at ourselves in the mirror.
I'm in front of a nice big mirror here.
But you can also use a hand mirror
if you happen to have one at home.
You can use a makeup mirror propped
up on books like a little compact.
You can even go sit in your bathroom.
I love to do that, just sit in the bathroom
in front of the mirror and draw.
The other thing that's going to be really helpful
for you today with this project,
we're gonna be focusing on shadows and light or value.
And if you have a clamp light like this one,
that would be useful.
If you have a bedside light or a lamp that you can use.
Even a garage, like a clamp light.
Any of those things; even a flashlight
that you bungee cord to something
so that it's up high and to one side of you.
Any of those things will work.
You just wanna find a way to get
a nice light source on your face.
And that's gonna make it a lot easier to see
how your face is sculpted,
basically by the lights and darks that fall upon it.
So when we're talking about value,
that's the artistic term for lights and darks.
It's amazing how many different shades you can find
on something when the light is hitting it well.
And that's gonna be what I'm gonna ask you to do first.
So let's just talk about our materials.
And then we're gonna get started by observing our faces.
So what I have on the table in front of me are my values.
And I've created these values by taking a newspaper
that everybody was finished with.
(laughing) so nobody's gonna care that I ripped it up.
And I looked for the darks.
Okay, nice dark shades.
The middle tones: So places in the paper that's not
totally dark but it's not totally light either.
And then, the lightest areas.
And I made a pile of each.
So my dark tones, my middle tones, and my light tones.
And we're gonna use those to build
the values of our portraits.
But before we do that, like I said, we're gonna observe.
So I have a clean sheet of paper here.
You can use copy paper, you can use sketch book paper,
whatever you have on-hand.
It's nice if your paper is at least 8.5 by 11.
It gives you a nice large surface to play with.
I also have a couple of pencils and erasers,
pencil sharpener, and a pair of scissors.
So these are all things that'll come in handy.
Oh, and a glue stick.
So you'll definitely need one of these.
Okay, so I'm gonna just start
by observing myself in the mirror.
I'm gonna take my glasses off.
And I'm looking for the areas in my face
that are, and my head.
I'm gonna look at this whole thing.
Where are the darkest darks?
Where do I see the darkest darks?
Well, I can see dark shadows all along
this side of my hair is very dark.
Where my hair meets my face is very dark over here.
The underside of my hair.
My nostrils, my eyeballs, corners of my mouth.
Those areas I see some strong darks.
I see a strong dark here on this side of my face.
Within my face, the next value that I see,
after those really dark hits of my nostrils and my eyeballs.
I also see big shadow shapes on my forehead.
I notice when I turn my face these triangles light up.
So I can see these triangular areas.
And above them are nice shadows.
These nice shadow areas in the eye socket of my eye, okay?
This side of my face is shadowed.
And I see a big shadow falling across my torso.
So I'm gonna take all of that information
and just kinda store it for a minute.
I've done some nice observing.
I've kinda have an idea where the darks
and middle tones are.
And I'm gonna think about how I'm gonna layout
my composition on my page.
So without even picking up a pencil,
I'm just imagining that I'm gonna
probably make my face pretty large.
Maybe show a little bit of my neck
and a little bit of my shoulders.
So I'm just kind of imagining touching my paper
with my hands to get an idea of where I'm gonna go.
And then I'm gonna take a pencil
and I'm gonna sketch out some ideas.
So a nice big oval for my head,
cylinder for my neck, and a simple line for my shoulders.
I'm also gonna just drop in a proportion map
just to help me kinda find my way.
So center line, mid-line where my eyes fall.
Another halfway between my eyes and my chin.
Mid-line for my nose, and another mid-line for my mouth,
just to help me get set up.
The next thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna
lightly sketch out those big shapes
of the shadows that we just found.
So the areas where the light is making shapes.
So the first thing I noticed was the
big shadow on my forehead, my eye sockets.
Lightly sketching those in.
One side of my nose had a nice shadow on it.
And then under my chin.
The light's falling in a diagonal across my body.
I'm also gonna make just a rough outline
for where my hair is.
You don't have to be detailed at this stage.
Because really, all you're doing is giving
yourself kind of a guideline for where
you're gonna put your values in.
Your portrait is gonna be defined
by the paper that you have cut out.
So I did all of these ahead of time.
It's kind of a nice way to get started,
is just to find a newspaper.
Make some nice piles that you can
work with before you drawing.
And then you'll have them ready to go
and you won't have to stop.
All right, so the next step that I'm gonna do
is to find all of my big, dark shapes.
And I'm gonna put them in with the paper.
So you'll see on your screen and example
of what this looks like.
This project takes a little bit of time.
So I prepared this example ahead of time,
so that you can get a feel for it.
And then ill show you how I go there.
Just briefly, I'll take a couple of steps here.
So you can cut or you can tear these shapes.
But what I'm doing is I'm just tryna
fill in the darks that I defined.
So I'm looking at this jawline where my chin is.
And I'm gonna just tear the paper so that it makes
kind of an echo of that.
I can refine my tear with the scissors
if I feel like I want to.
But I'm not worrying about being perfect or exact.
This is a fun project to let it happen loosely.
It's fun to see the darks and the lights
slowly start to fill the face.
So right away, even just putting
in this first sheet of dark shadow.
Can already see how just by putting in that dark,
I'm starting to define the face.
So I'm just gonna keep going.
Gonna continue to build this shadow like so.
Okay, so as I continue to build the darks,
(paper tearing)
I'm gonna start noticing that the dark shadows
that I'm laying in come up against really subtle shades
that maybe I'm not quite sure if
they're a dark or a middle tone.
So one of the way kind of make things a little clear,
is when you observe and you're making decisions
about where to put the shadows,
squint your eyes like this.
And when I squint, what happens is everything simplifies.
And suddenly I see fewer subtleties.
So I can really tell, ah okay,
so the shadow under my neck really is
just a little bit lighter than the tone behind it.
The shadow of my jaw here is a little bit lighter
than the tone of my neck.
So I can start to make those decisions
a little bit easier about what kind of paper to lay in.
So I'm just gonna work on this for a couple of minutes.
And then I'm gonna show you the next step.
(upbeat jazz music)
Okay, I've gone a little bit further here
with my darks and I'm gonna start adding
to this with some middle tones.
So you can see on your screen,
here's an example of what that starts to look like
once you start getting the darks
and the middle tones in together.
You can really start to see the face taking shape.
This is a project that you can
definitely spend some time with.
So what I've done, is I've gone
all the way to the end at home
so that I could show you what the finished
portrait looks like, okay?
And I have it right here as well.
So this is an example of having all of the darks in
and all of the middle tones in.
And then leaving some of the white of the paper,
just as an artistic decision.
And also to define where the lightest light is hitting
my portrait, my face.
So here, the light's coming form this side.
When I was at home it was doing the same thing.
I was lit from this side.
And so you'll see that that's where I have
some empty space that I've only defined the edge
of my hair with some of the middle tone,
to show that the bright light is
actually becoming the white of the paper.
So this is a really fun project to do
with yourself, or with a friend.
You could look at someone while their watching TV
or while their reading a book.
If you have a captive audience for a while
and you can define them with value as well.
And what I would encourage you to do
is just to observe lights and darks as much as you can.
You'll have noticed that throughout the day,
the way that the light hits objects
or people is gonna change what you see and how they look.
So light is a really fun thing to observe
and to pay attention to because it really defines form
and helps to create mood and expression.
So have fun with it.
Thanks for being here.
And keep making stuff.
(upbeat pop music)