Sargent Sketches & Systems - A demo

Hey guys, this is going to be a quick sketching of Sergeant Heads. I'm just going to be doing a few, showing my process, some of the things that Sergeant used to get a likeness, some other things like Riley Ridley Rhythms and other things that, you know, other people talk about. It's going to be fun. I hope you guys enjoy it. Let's get right into it. So, I already did a few warm-up sketches. They're a bit off-screen because it's a very large pad of paper. But just generally trying to get my hand a little warmed up. Just a few. We're going to get right into this without further ado. When you're first drawing the head, it's useful to draw a circle. And I'm sure this is, everybody's heard of this. You just draw a very basic shape of a circle because from a frontal view, the cranium has a very circular kind of shape to it from the front. From the side, it's more of a, it's more of an oval or a bowl shape. But anyway. So you want to do that circle and then you split the circle in half, generally speaking. And this is more of the Loomis slash Riley method because I'm going to be introducing some rhythm lines as well. But you split the line in half and this is going to be essentially the brown line. So we take that brown line and then you go one, two, and then you add a third on. This is what Loomis did. And then once you have these three different parts, you have the nose line, the brow line, the forehead line, and the chin line. And this isn't going to be true for every single portrait that you do because it's going to vary depending on what likeness you're getting. But for this guy, we're going to see if that holds true. So the bottom of his chin I'm going to measure right here to his nose, that's one. So we can see that that's off, two, and three, way off. So this guy has a very interesting head. So right from the start, we're going to get those measurements correct and that's going to help us a lot in the future stages. So let's see. We can keep this measurement, right, because we know that's a third. And we know that the nose and the forehead are actually an even measurement as well. So it looks like, and we'll go like that, just a little bit, let's see, and then we're going to get into the general shape of the head and we know that, let's see, the nose is going to line up right around there. We're going to try to be a little generally loose on this as well. So the eyebrows, this guy has really interesting eyebrows, but for the rhythm of the eyebrows it's more just a little U, sort of like that. But for this guy, it's a little bit different, so we're going to, let's see. It's kind of like, like that almost. It's a very interesting expression. And then that comes down to the nose. And a lot of the time when you're seeing artists do the Reilly rhythm, or the Reilly method rather, they'll draw in a proxy for the nose here. So just kind of a placeholder. What they'll do is they'll grab an oval or a circle, depending on the sitter here, and then they grab that shape and then they'll put in the little nose brow shape. Which is usually like a little, like a Starbucks cup almost. Or just a coffee cup. So we have that as a placeholder now. And it's going to help us kind of flesh out the actual shape of the nose. And then also with the mouth. The shape of the mouth is very muzzle-like. So you can see that this is also a rhythm line. If you look at the Reilly head rhythm lines, you'll see the rhythm of the face goes around the muzzle right here. So you'll see that generally, speaking a lot of the time. Everything's relatively correct. So we're just going to, in that little, that mustache. I really like mustaches because they help give you a solid shape around a lot of larger shapes that otherwise be not disconnected. So when you have really large shapes, especially in the head, it's kind of hard to do the shape method that surgeons usually employ. Where you're just checking shapes, you're not using as many measurements or constructive anatomy. Like sort of what I'm doing here. And the problem with that is that it's really easy to mess up really large shapes. If you don't have an intuitive understanding of how to draw. So it's a lot easier. In this case, what I'm going to do is that I'm going to use the mustache. And that's going to help me actually grab out where a shape's correct and where it's incorrect. Because the smaller the shape is, usually the easier it is to tell if your version of it is accurate or not. And then I'm going to check the distance from the eyebrow to the hairline right there. It's about that tall. And it doesn't really have to be perfect. Just generally correct. And another thing you're going to see in a lot of Riley drawings is that there's these lines from the forehead that connect right around the edge of the eyebrow where it turns over. And that creates this sort of square shape a lot of the time. And for some people it's more of a circle shape. But it goes through the eyelids. And you get this really large circle basically. And it helps you place where the head is actually turning over. So that's interesting as well. So you can usually put that and it'll help you actually place the shapes on the head. So in this case, it kind of goes over here. And we're going to check that. Like that. And then we can just really easily block in some of that shadow shape. I'm not getting too bogged down in the details. I'll just loosen up. Because this isn't supposed to be a perfect master copy. It's supposed to be just a study right. And Sargent, of course, was known for working quick, relatively speaking. He would spend weeks on oil painting sometimes. But his work always shows a lot of bravado and speed. Because when he actually put brush to canvas, he certainly was not working slow. It was mostly the time that he spent painting where the space is in between him putting his brush on the canvas and him stepping back. Because he would spend a lot of time determining what to do next. And he'd do a lot of memory drawing. Which is one of the things one of my subscribers actually told me about in my other Sargent video. So now I'm just seeing where this ear is going to line up. And it looks like it's lining up right around there. And this is called the envelope method that I just did with the ear. And what it's doing is that if you have a very organic shape. That, for example. And I'm trying to draw this shape on my reference. Then what you can do is that you can just use your angles. And you can kind of box in the general shape. So you make the more organic shape more angular. And then it can help you bring in the more subtle curves. So you can see that. That's sort of a subtle curve. And then this comes off the eye line. So we know that that's kind of like that. And Sargent always used really sharp lines in his nostrils. And you can see that once we go into some other people in this book. You're going to see that pretty definitely. And I'm convinced that Sargent knew his nose anatomy. Just because always his noses looked so cool. Especially in his charcoal portraits. And he really had a lot of fun designing them. I think at least. So he was sort of. He said that he always painted what he saw. But I always assumed that he was a bit of a characterist. So if you can take caricature to a very minimal extent. And just apply it to your drawings. In a very realistic drawing. That's sort of what he was doing. So consciously or unconsciously. But that's why his nose has always looked bigger than life. Because, I mean, nobody really has that interesting of a nose. At least from what I've seen. Maybe people back then had more interesting features. I don't know. So anyway. So when you're drawing beards and really clumps of hair. You're not drawing the individual hairs. You can suggest them like Sargent did here. But what's really important for the subconscious. What's going to tip people off. Say that that looks wrong. Whatever the big value shapes. So we're just going to get that big value shape in. In there. Let's see. And whenever you're drawing. It's good to follow through different parts of the drawing. So if I see this shape right here. And I'm trying to copy this line down correctly. I'm going to follow through the tip of the nose. That I know is right here. And then I'm going to go down. And you can lift your pencil up. And it's called like ghosting in. Where you're following the curve. And then you go down. And actually strike on the paper. But you're not actually putting your paper down there. And that helps you. Make sure that you're lining up your things correctly. Because I can say. Okay I'm going to line it up with this nose. But if I put it right here. I might displace it. It allows you to actually carry the line. So we're going to go in here. And then. I noticed this. This sort of rhythm right here. That interesting shape. I'm going to cut it off. Lift it off a little higher. Like that. It's got a very interesting nose. And when I'm placing eyes. It's a lot of checking the negative shapes. Around the eyelid. So that's why it's important to put the eyes in last. Which is what Sargent would frequently do. So you can look up. Unfinished Sargent drawings. You always put the eyes in last. The paintings even. And that was because. I saw the eyes as a little spot on the apple. Where you need to place them correctly. So you get the socketless. You're not going to get the likeness correct. So you build up the rest of the skull around. And you're placing the eyes better. Which is opposite of. What you intuitively want to do. But. As with a lot of things in art. Your intuition. Is almost always wrong. At least with the. Being precise in your drawing. And your values and all that. You'll find that out. If you go into blue quickly though. When they try to draw something. It doesn't look like what they want to draw. So with the eyes. You always want them to line up. So right now. This guy's interesting. He has an angle right here. So. Let me just. Give us a little bit of an eye there. And you can see. That right there. Because he's working from life of course. You saw those. Deeper core shadows. So you kind of. Thicken up the shadow on the edge. So. You can see that that. The side of the face kind of curves in. Just like that. And then this is a lighter value. And this beard has very interesting. Flow to it. Which he'd suggest. She's a bit smaller. And as with a lot of things in art. If you do it one time. It always looks way better. Than just. Racing it. Putting it back. Using several lines. To say the same thing. So that's why a lot of the time. The paintings we do the quickest. Always look the best. Because it has a certain amount of freshness. To the line work. Because it doesn't look as. It's hardened. You know. And Sargent was so good at that. It looked like every single brush stroke. Was intentional. And it was masterful. And he did it one time. And it was done. You never go back. And that's an interesting. Kind of dichotomy. That you see between. Abstraction. And realism. And when you're trying. To represent something. Realistically. A lot of the time. There's. Difficult problems. Like finding the right value. Because values are very relative. It's easy to make the wrong. Relative value. In painting. So what happens is that. You put something in. It looks very good. Abstractly. Because it looks fresh. And all this other stuff. What happens is that. It's actually the wrong value. For example. So it looks good abstractly. But it's poor representationally. So you rework it. And rework it. And you put it more and more. In brush strokes. And eventually. What happens is that. It looks representationally correct. But it looks abstractly dead. To the eye. And Sargent. Was just not. A pawn to that. To that sort of. Human restriction. Because what he would do. Is that. He had this amazing ability. To just. Make something look. Abstractly brilliant. And then. And it looked. Almost accidental. That's how. That's how skilled. A draftsman. And a painter. He was. Just wicked stuff. Impossible stuff. Nobody could really do it. Because even now. There's a lot of. Loose painters. But just. You know Sargent. When you see one. You know. All right. So. I'm decently happy with that. I'm not going to. Work it too much. Because this. Isn't. Supposed to be. A copy again. So. But. Yeah. Let me just. Suggest. I'm going to. A little bit of a. Bow tie there. A regular tie. Or whatever he has on. All right. So this guy might be. A little bit more difficult. Because it looks like. Sargent rendered out. A lot more. And when he would keep things simple. It'd be a lot easier to actually. Correctly copy down. Because what would happen. Is that. He would simplify. To such an extent. That you would only have to copy. A few shapes correctly. But when he would. Take the extra mile. Rendered out a little bit more. More like his paintings then. Be a bit more difficult. To just. Take it to the level of finish. That he had. But a lot of the time. People get. Caught in the trap of. Making things. Too rendered out. And they lose a lot of the vitality. That they originally had. Like I was talking about earlier. All right. So. I'm going to just put in a little. The nose shape. Like the Starbucks cup. That we talked about earlier. And then there's usually. This little bump. Kind of. On the nose. I know the nose. Finishes right here. So there's. A nose circle. So. It looks like the. Eyebrow line goes. Kind of like that. All right. Let's see. Face goes in a bit. Goes in and in. All right. So. That's what the eyes are. So we're going to place. The little. Eye shape. Like that. And he has really. Eyelids. Because there's eyebrows. Maybe he had his eyebrow up. Or something. I'm going to start. Drawing this. I always wondered. How people would hold. Poses that long. For a surgeon. Especially. Because. He would redo. A lot of his stuff. And just. If it didn't look. Working. Just throw it out. All right. Restart. And honestly. That's probably the way to go. It just makes your. Pants look a lot better. But Sargent was. People think that he. Did everything first try. And that's certainly. Certainly not true. Because he was. Human after all. So it's more like the. The mustache. Goes in right here. Kind of throws out. And then you have the. The cheek. Like that. You have. Kind of a. It's very interesting. There's. A lot of fat pads. And. And then we can see. The second line. Goes up like that. And. What's funny is whenever I'm copying. Poses or portraits. From these books. I always end up. Going Cite size. Even when I don't use the. Original measurements. For the realist one. For hiding with. It's kind of a funny thing. You. Do just. Naturally. want to do it sight-sized. So yeah, if you're working from life and you're doing a portrait painting or drawing or whatever, I highly suggest working sight-sized. It just makes everything easier. And it's also, it's not really, I'd consider cheating, if there is such a thing, as something that you don't, a tool they wouldn't readily have available to you in a lot of situations. And sight-sized certainly isn't one of them. Even when you're working from reference on your phone or something, you can back up and hold it up to the point where it's sight-sized. And sight-sized definitely isn't cheating or anything. I think that'd be ridiculous to say. So this guy has a very creative face. It looks like it goes in a little bit further than that. And it looks also like, excuse me, this, it's there. It's an interesting shape. I'm just going to simplify that here. And it looks like just basically all this is in darkness, so I'm just going to give that a little wash. It's good to always erase the lines that you want to fix, otherwise it's going to become distracting and confusing, too. Because if you forget what was correct, then you don't know which line it is. It also just looks ugly, visually, because complexity is ugly, generally speaking, or unnecessary complexity. Okay, so the mouth is right about there. You know, I was always amazed by caricature artists, especially the speed that they would do things. It just blows me away. And it's almost like I'm speaking outside of my bounds of understanding here, because I'm not a caricature artist. But it would seem to me that they would do things so loosely, but so accurately. And I wonder if it would be easier, in some sense, to get away with wrong proportions in caricature, as long as you're exaggerating the individual parts of somebody. But, again, I don't really know. So as you can see, I was talking earlier about the sharp nose. I did that a lot. I always thought it looked really good, but that was Signature Sergeant stuff. Let's make sure that... God, this guy's eye. This is like the archetype of an optimum, right here. Let's see what else we've got here. Another one of those. That's a good one. Looks like a pretty tall one. But of course, when it's in the shadow, I don't really care. It's going to be a little bit more. Let's see. Man, this guy has a ridiculous face. This is crazy. It's very unique. You know, it's interesting that Sergeant Woodrow Wilson is famous. Sometimes, when one's going to do a likeness right, he'd scream, demons, demons, apparently, according to an account. And he'd just throw it out, and whatnot. Which is actually, it makes a lot of sense. Because even with portraiture, likeness is so difficult that, even if you're as skilled as Sergeant, one of the most famous, if not the infamous, portrait artists in all of history, it's so difficult that sometimes it even comes down to a little bit of luck to get it correct. So he'd just keep cashing in until he actually got a canvas that worked for him. And he also liked that fresh approach, of course, that we talked about. And it really is true. It looks so much better. And that's part of what the Impressionists taught in the art world. It's that freshness, there's a certain vitality and interest in it that you don't really see in really minor drawings. And if you take it a bit too far, though, you can start losing the viewer. Because anything in excess, in nature art especially, just doesn't really look as good. So if it's too abstract, and especially modern abstraction nowadays, where people really don't know what they're doing abstractly, because they never went to representation art school, because they don't know what abstraction is, it doesn't really read as beautifully as some of the work. Representation or even abstract. But if you do go into abstraction, then I'd tip my hat off to you if you're interested in that. But you should understand how to paint representational, because it helps you understand where abstract compositions work and fail. Because you can change any representational artwork into an abstract thing, you just have to simplify the details enough. And if you can get something that works representationally, it's working abstractly. At least if the composition is right. But you remove the representational elements and it loses a bit of its own character. It's an interesting balance, but a lot of the time, learning composition, learning art in general, is just a matter of being a detective in a weird way. You know, just trying out things that didn't work, trying others. Maybe you'll stumble onto something new and notice they do that. You know, and the whole freshness thing is really interesting, because even other artists besides Sargent, the famous artist Abbott Thayer, for example, he said that he wouldn't work on a painting for more than three days or else he'd ruin it. And honestly, if you've painted for a while, you can understand that sentiment. Especially if you videotape yourself painting, it's really interesting, because you can see where things go south. Because eventually, if you work on a painting too much, especially a painting, sometimes drawings too, any form of art really, but paintings especially. So what happens is that you work it, you rework it, and eventually it just falls apart. Like you start doing, you make it worse. You make all the values incorrect. And drawings can talk about this, you just ruin it. And it's interesting, because you don't even notice what you're doing, but everything that you do to a drawing or a painting is noticeable at some level. And you compound that over the course of hours and days of just ruining it, you know? No wonder it's going to ruin it, you know? So, Abathur was an interesting guy. Same with, what's his name, the guy who made Nighthawks. He had really interesting quotes. Let's look up some of those. He said, if I could write it down or something, then I'd have a reason to paint. And it's an interesting proposition. Because it gets to what art is, and it's unconscious communication. You know, it's emotional communication. And you can't say in words what you can say in paint, it's really interesting. But it's also, it's something that goes beyond culture or anything else. It's a ubiquitous language that all human beings can understand. Because you can look at a work, I'm American, right, and I can look at a work of Japanese art and I can appreciate it. And that can be moved by it. And that's something, right? That's something beyond language or culture. That's what makes art just so fascinating to me. Now Sargent did this all the time in charcoal as well. He would have these tiny white spots, and his highlights would always be really interesting. So I love those. You can see, for example, on camera here. That one right there. And then, let's see what else, they're just all over the place. And I wondered how he'd get that, because charcoal a lot of times sticks to the paper so much, so it's really difficult to... To keep that, right? Because you cover up, you make a mistake or whatever, then it's just gone. But he did a really good job at making those clean shapes, and then also just, you know, making them bright, bright white. Anyway, you guys, so, this video's getting pretty long, so... Thanks for coming around and watching it. Leave me some comments about some future videos that you'd like to see, if you like this kind of content. What other content do you like from the channel? I appreciate that. Have a great day, and I hope your art improves and you can make something beautiful.