Heads, Features and Faces
Capturing the human face convincingly is one of those challenges that trips up even committed art students. It demands precision, patience, and a solid grasp of structure. This focused volume tackles exactly that, covering the head, face, and individual features with the kind of clarity that makes a genuinely tricky subject feel approachable. Nearly 200 illustrations support the written guidance throughout, and the life-drawing framework gives the whole thing a practical, grounded feel rather than a dry, academic one. Bridgman spent fifty years teaching at the Art Students League of New York, and that experience shows. He treats perspective and planes with the same seriousness as anatomy, which helps readers build a richer understanding of how features sit in relation to one another and to the face as a whole. The book covers the head at different eye levels, its planes and forms, and then works through the eye, nose, mouth, and ear individually. Sections on light and shade, proportional measurement, and cube and oval construction round things out nicely. Particularly worthwhile is Bridgman's inclusion of work by celebrated portrait painters. Vermeer, Rembrandt, Hals, Reynolds, and Vigée Le Brun all appear, giving readers the chance to study what made their portraiture so enduring. It's a thoughtful addition, one that connects technical instruction to genuine artistic tradition. Useful, well-illustrated, and written with authority.
- Author: George Brant Bridgman
- Publisher: Dover Pubns
- Genre: Decorative Arts
- ISBN: 978-0486227085
- Pages: 64 pages