Pages of Heads

I wanted to work through some heads at volume, and spend as little time on each as possible. I was also looking for a warm-up of sorts on generic heads, and then to stretch that into some more challenging pieces that I've still not focused on yet (I know it's taking a while getting to the study parts), but I wanted to be loose and capture basic expressions in some of these as well.

All in all I think it was a worthy exercise, and I really like the way the sketchbook pages turn out, just full of faces and angles. It's great. Not all the heads turn out great, but some have potential, and that's all that matters. Pretty useful for potential material as well, which I could use for more developed works, and there are multiple ways I could extract the information: take a photo and fix it up digitally, or use it as reference to enlarge as a singular piece. There are lots of options.

Text-wise this post will be short, as I think we are getting familiar with some of the process and purposes behind smashing into that sketchbook. This exercise pushed me further away from the "every page perfection" attitude I started with, and gave me freedom and flexibility to work fast and loose. I've endeavoured to leave all the construction shapes in place that the more detailed lines were built upon, as an indication to you and me of how these things start in my process. I'm still not at the point where I can go in with direct ink and nail the look yet, which is why these are all in pencil.

I've also found it useful to start moving away from the tools. I know this site serves the purpose of holding those for me, but I suppose this is a stage in development where the tools have allowed me to add a translation step between what I observe in the reference and the page, which I have slowly, maybe, been able to integrate directly into my observation, allowing the tools step to be cut out, at least for pieces I have more confidence creating. There will certainly always be a place for the tools, but they don't have to be used every time and for every line!