[41] If you were drawing a map of England with all the counties, and found, when you had nearly completed it, that there was no room left for Rutlandshire, or that too great a space had been left over for Leicestershire, you would begin to look about for a fault in some other part of the map. So in your drawings everything must dovetail and fit.

In subsequent lessons detailed consideration will be given to the drawing of arms and legs, so that I need not go further with instructions on these points for the present, my main object being to indicate a method of construction on something like a scientific basis, a synthetic method reasoned carefully from beginning to end, where the element of chance is not allowed a place. And although I am aware that the system followed in this figure and its position cannot be rigidly applied in the case of figures differing totally in action, still on some such lines construction can, and should always be, synthetically considered; and if at first, and for a time, the method may seem tedious, it will repay you in the long run, and the mental process involved will become by degrees less and less fatiguing.

By way of practice, refer to the two other Plates of nude figures that are drawn without indicating [42] lines ; and try mentally to supply these lines and all the instructions given above.

The sketch of a female nude model was done more particularly to show how, by the use of the " spaces left," the figure can be firmly seated and the legs foreshortened in a drawing ; and I should advise you when doing a seated figure always to draw the chair as though it were part of the figure. It will then sit at ease, and the rigid outlines of the seat will help you to overcome some of the difficulties of proportion.

You will find the cast of an antique statue an excellent subject on which to practise the foregoing hints on construction.

VII.

[43]

CHAPTER III

CONSTRUCTION OF THE HEAD

THE best guide to the construction of the head is a thorough study of the skull. Obtain or borrow one, and draw it in as many positions as possible, so that you may readily trace the balance of the bone forms in every face and head you draw.

Note particularly those parts of the bone forms that are but thinly covered in the living model, the plane of the temple, the relative position of the teeth and frontal bones, the contour of the chin, jaw, &c.

Now let us consider some points to which sufficient attention is rarely paid.

One of the most important of these is the placing of the ear.

The accompanying drawings were made with this object mainly in view :-

Remember that the ear is the axis of the head.

In proportion it is about the length of the nose, the top in a line with the brows and the end of the lobe opposite the nostrils.

Since the ears, like all the other features, have their fixed place in the skull, they and these other [44] features must be considered in relation to the movement of the head and to each other.

When the face is lowered, the ear is relatively raised and inclined with the direction of the face forward. Its base will be seen opposite the bridge of the nose, or in a line with the eyes, according to the inclination of the face. See Plates VIII. and IX. When the face is upturned the ear is lowered, and will be seen in a line with the chin (Plate X.) and inclined backwards.

VIII.

When the face is turned slightly from you the width of the neck and head behind it is increased, and the space from the ear to the cheek-bone proportionately decreased (Plate XI.), and of course still more so, with the head turned away (XII.).

The placing of the ear determines most clearly for us the actions of raising and lowering the face.

The study of the skull will have taught you that (with slight variations only, due to marked personal characteristics to which I shall refer later) one side of the face must answer to the other. These answering shapes require attention. If, for instance, in the three-quarter face the modelling of the near cheek is rounded by a smile, see that your outline of the further cheek responds. When, again, for example, the head is inclined to the right, the left ear is higher up on the head than the other, and so on.

IX.