Drawing the Human Head

By Burne Hogarth

Book Overview

The acclaimed cartoonist hailed as the "Michelangelo of the comic strip" presents a comprehensive and authoritative guide on how to draw any type of head from every angle, age the face from infancy to old age, and much more.

In Drawing the Human Head, Burne Hogarth masterfully analyzes the basic structure, proportions, and anatomy of the human head. He carefully delineates the precise form and musculature of every facial feature; he outlines wrinkle patterns and demonstrates how to draw the head from every single angle; and he clearly explains how to age the face from birth to old age. Stressing the primary need to draw the head and body artistically, Hogarth defines head types according to structure and explains what features go with these types. To illustrate the vast diversity of head structures and proportions, he displays a sampling of heads throughout the world and offers a gallery of great heads in paintings, drawing, etches, sculptures, and other notable works of art throughout history.

Burne Hogarth's unique teaching methods in Drawing the Human Head, part of his comprehensive Dynamic Drawing Series, are indispensable for every professional artist, art student, teacher, painter, sculptor, illustrator, cartoonist, animator, and serious amateur.

Burne Hogarth's masterful Dynamic Drawing Series is an invaluable resource for any artist:
DRAWING DYNAMIC HANDS - DRAWING THE HUMAN HEAD - DYNAMIC ANATOMY - DYNAMIC FIGURE DRAWING - DYNAMIC LIGHT AND SHADE - DYNAMIC WRINKLES AND DRAPERY

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0823013766
• ISBN13: 9780823013760
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: Watson-Guptill
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 8.5" x 10.9"
• Age Range: 16 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grades 11 to 12

Customer Reviews

Excellent!

I absolutely love this book. I learned a lot from it in a short period of time. Most definately I would recomend it to anyone who has an idea about drawing that is interested in drawing portraits.

Not for the weak of heart...

This book is excellent! This is first and foremost a book on drawing no fat, face composition "blanks" of human face types. This is the most complete basic face composition book out there. Changing this into a certain person comes later on. If you're looking for a book on how to draw certain people, this is not a book for you. If youre merely looking for in depth info on aging this is not a book for you. If you're merely looking for a book on how to draw faces simple and easy, this is not a book for you. But if you have the desire to know what the form is really like, not just lines, this is the book for you. The illustrations are to be understood, not to be copied. This book is for understanding, not remembering. It's logic, not like a phone number. An instant classic.

Decent enough, glad I bought it

As another reader said, I'm not particularly fond of Hogarth's style, but this is a useful book (for what it covers). Content is limited in breadth, but goes into good depth on multicultural features and aging. I would have liked to see more examples of females, though, especially aged female faces.

Generally useful, avoids some obvious pitfalls

Although taking a formal course of study in human anatomy will give you greater depth in drawing the human head as far as proportion is concerned, this book does go into more depth than a course would in terms of facial features.Burne is of the old school in the sense that he probably learned such terms as "dolichocephalic" and "brachiocephalic" in the earlier part of this century, when these labels were commonly applied to ethnic groups. But he ably avoids this obsolete view by demonstrating these head types have examples in a variety of racial and ethnic groups.This very variety of ethnic facial examples is the greatest strength of the book. I've seen too many comic books try to portray a multi-cultural cast without knowing how!