The Artist's Complete Guide to Drawing the Head

As a previous reviewer has noted, the title of this book is a bit misleading- it's not a "complete" guide to drawing the head. It really has a rather narrow focus: it concentrates on drawing three-quarter view portraits with (if you follow Maugham's instruction precisely) using two particular colors of pastel pencil on shaded drawing paper. In addition to his specific materials and subjects, Maughan concentrates on teaching chiaroscuro (use of light and shadow to depict form) in a "classical realist" style. However, for what the book really does, it does quite well. Keeping a narrow focus in a drawing instruction book is a virtue. Many drawing books (and I have a lot, since I've been trying to teach myself) try to cover far too much. They try to summarize in a page or two each of the different drawing mediums (pastel, charcoal, pencil, pen, etc.) and different elements of drawing (line, tone, etc.) while not giving you enough depth or detail about any one thing to learn much that's useful. Maughan, though, sticks to his central focus, describes the basic principles of chiaroscuro in an understandable manner, breaks down his drawing process into basic steps, and provides more demonstrations and detail than most books of this sort. The best evidence I can give in its favor is that my drawing immediately improved after I read this book and started practicing its techniques (even though I've mostly been using pencil rather pastel, so you don't have to precisely follow Maughan's recommendations). Overall, it's one of the clearest and most useful drawing instruction books that I've seen. It's not really an ideal book for people just taking the first steps in learning to draw realistic portraits (for absolute beginners I would still recommend Betty Edwards' flawed but effective "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain"). It doesn't have much depth on some of the things that beginners need to learn, such as judging proportion. However, it's a good book to use early in your drawing career.

This is by far the best book on drawing I’ve ever read, and I’ve read many. The author teaches you something more important than how to draw - he teaches you how to see as an artist. He teaches you how to see shapes more clearly through the filter of chiaroscuro. When you accurately identify the lights and darks of your subject and break it break down to just five values - darkest darks, reflected light, halftone, and highlights - your drawing automatically becomes more realistic and convincing. I love the author’s step-by-step demonstrations and easy to follow text. If you are looking for a systematic method that simplifies the process of drawing and helps you improve your artwork immediately, this is the book.

This book was exactly what I needed at this point in time in my artistic life. I was struggling with shadow theory vs actually seeing it and rendering it in a believable way. My portrait skills had been improving, but they still looked slightly cartoonish and caricature is not what I was going for. It's a lifetime of practice and study for sure. But this book helped me recognize some of what I was struggling to see. Not for everyone's style for sure. And I certainly do not agree it's the complete guide or the only way! But it was exactly where I wanted my work to go. But I'm a fan of the loomis method which he refers to in the beginning... one point is that I tried but do not like the particular paper he suggests and I couldn't find the color anywhere and belive it's no longer produced. So just use what you love in a tone that makes sense. I do however love the stabilo pencils nearly as much as I love conte crayons/sticks, and they are definitely easier to sharpen than conte pencils! Of which I have a love hate relationship. So that was a lovely new find. The content is good. I wish he'd shown more than the 3/4 style view. But overall it was the nudge to understanding facial shadows that i needed to keep developing as an artist and was worth the money for me.

Let's get this first out of the way, this is a great book and I really believe it should be part of any realist artist's library. The author is quite knowledgable and he does share very useful best practices and what to watch for. Like any good teacher, he keeps driving the points home, over and over, to make sure that best practices are not missed. I would like to comment on three different aspects regarding this book. First, this is not a beginner's book. I'm not sure I'd agree that the subject is drawing the head actually. There are so many other books that address drawing the head more thoroughly, which includes anatomical coverage, different construction methods, and proportions. I personally bought this book to learn how to draw Chiaroscuro (light and dark) correctly and how to get that renaissance-like feel in my sketches and drawings. The book does not disappoint, it has great instructions and many examples to follow. The second point is about tools recommendations. Make sure you are comfortable with CarbOthello #645, otherwise, just use a pencil that provides Sanguine tone that you are comfortable with. My own experience is that CarbOthello #645 is not that easy to master, there's a learning curve. Now, here's why I didn't give this book 5 stars and was tempted to give it 3 actually, even though that I love this book! The entire book and all the examples in have already solved the most important step 0. In other words, there is not a single actual photograph of a model of any of the finished drawings. This is a serious drawback for me. Drawing is seeing in the first place, and few examples of actual photos showing how to separate the light from shadows, and more importantly, driving the point of how to accurately define the shadow shapes (and negative spaces) is missing. Each example has already solved that important first step.

“The Artist's Complete Guide to Drawing the Head” by William L. Maughan The title says “Complete Guide” and it means it !!! This is a positive gold mine of information... all very clear and well-presented. But be advised... you won't read this book in 20 minutes; you won't grasp everything in 20 minutes; and you won't read it just once. But if you are determined to take your talent up several notches and are willing to put in the mental sweat equity” to do it, this book will get it done for you regardless of your chosen media(s). An EXTREMELY valuable feature of this book is that it illustrates and advocates the use of the Chiaroscuro style which (imho) is the best way to produce any art. In a nutshell, Chiaroscuro is the elimination of “boundary” lines by production of the figure via shading and tonal/texture changes. Not only is it a very high level of printed art but it is mandatory for my favorite art form – pyrography (woodburning) – and beautiful for other “3D” art forms eg. Gourd Art etc.

This truly is a five star book for those wishing to start to develop their drawing skills further than the average joe doodler. The simple explanations are well written and can be easily understood. Each page is packed with drawing diagrams and processes that explains Williams thoughts on chiaroscuro and other aspects. This book has EVERYTHING you need to know about drawing a portrait with a level of competence. If your one that has no opportunity to go to a school to learn drawing or unable to afford education then this book is for you. It is one of the few books I'd recommend to add to your self education library. If your a parent with a child wanting to draw then this is also a good book for them, it will give them a very good head start in how to draw properly compared to the other "how to draw" books, that are on the market. I first was introduced to this book by my wife who got it from the library for me, and it changed my way of thinking and my illustration style completely! Cheers, Rick.

I started drawing at a young age but haven't done any art for a long time. My background is in figure drawing & portrait. I think this book will help in retraining my eye/mind in seeing negative spaces and shapes. This book starts out with describing the technique, supplies recommended and then the "how to" on drawing each feature of the face. It does offers a lot of info but is laid out nicely and not overwhelming to read. It would be easy to skip around & read any section I want/need to focus on. I did take a figure drawing class that taught this technique and really enjoyed it. The technique changed how I viewed space in a subject or item and helped with the overall story of the drawing. It also became fun to watch the drawing come to life. I can remember my instructor saying that drawing each detail with the same intensity as the main focus of the subject is an insult to the viewers imagination.

Maughan's thesis is that by employing a few, easily-understood techniques and materials, his reader will be able to create high-quality portraits. This is true, but it is not, as Maughan seems to think, the only way or even the best way. I am not completely convinced. The Good, Very, very good exposition of his theory. Very good illustrative examples. Provides a lot of information that will work with any style of portrait drawing The Bad. His method is not the only way. He doesn't talk about the weaknesses of his method He could have spared the reader the sections on drawing imaginative figures and painting. Maughan's Artist's Complete Guide to drawing the Head is a hard book to judge. Maughan puts forth the idea that it is possible to draw the human head using carefully-redered shapes of lighter and darker tone instead of with the traditional method of drawing a line and filling in the shadows. Someone with a sense of humor try to sum up his book with, "Draw the shadows and highlights correctly and blammo! you have a head!" He calls this method "Chiaroscuro" (Italian for "bright/dark") but he means it in a way that is different from the use of strong contrasts between lit- and unlit areas on human forms that Caravaggio made famous. He means attention to the shapes and tones of the areas of greatest contrast and he does a great job of distilling this into a method with useable, understandable parts. The book would be fine if Maughan had stopped there, but he doesn't. He goes on to overstate the strength of his method in a way that lessens the real vigor of his opinion. Maughan looks at drawing as a prelude to painting and the use of shapes of tone to draw as the most effective way of going about it, but at times, his thought seems to go beyond imparting useful ideas to slide into dogma.. At times, he seems to equate the side of the point with wisdom and virtue in a way that is just plain annoying if you've had an art history class, or to atelier-style, classical drawing techniques (with their obsessive attention to searching clarity and deadly accuracy) that you find in other books. He doesn't say, "this is just one way of drawing faces," and her certainly never tells his audience that the way he wants them to draw ONLY works on toned paper that does all the heavy lifting and that it would be close to useless on white, or that his method would simply stop functioning without the subject's sitting in perfect portrait lighting, or that, if he is right, both Kaethe Kolwittz and J.A.D. Ingres, have a lot of explaining to do. Despite the above, I still found The Artist's Complete Guide to Drawing the Head a positive, and enlightening use of my time spent in the pursuit of draftsmanship. The book is a little long, and Maughan runs out of material about midway through, but his way of looking at things definitely works to create in the reader a different way of looking at the relationship of light and shadow on the human face but at the end of the day, Maughan is talking about a method of drawing and not *the* method. This book should be bought and used, but only in conjunction with other books that give the exact opposite advice that Maughan does.

Sendo desenhista eu sigo alguns mestres, como Giovanni Civardi, Andrew Loomis e Mozart Couto. A maioria do que aprendi foi com eles, e por enquanto bastava, por isso fiquei relutante em comprar este livro do Maughan, afinal, não parecia fornecer muito mais do que eu já tinha. Ledo engano. Finalmente um livro que entende não apenas a dificuldade do artista com chiaroscuro, mas que aborde com profundidade (piada intencional) os problemas enfrentados ao desenhar a estrutura da cabeça humana em diferentes perspectivas, não apenas trivia de senso comum (o comprimento da orelha ser igual à distância entre a sobrancelha/margem inferior do arco superciliar e a base do nariz, a regrinha dos 1/3 etc etc), mas como diferentes ângulos podem dar uma impressão dismórfica, mostrando desenhos no vale da estranheza, explicando o porquê de estarem assim e sua versão 'corrigida' ao lado. A mesclagem referencial de faces humanas com feras certamente é um ponto alto e não deveria ser entendido como uma mera piada do autor: eles dão uma bela noção de como pode ser mantida uma harmonia no desconhecido, regra no caos. Excelente leitura.

Llegó a tiempo y fue un regalo muy bien recibido.

I have quite a collection of art books and videos, but for portrait drawing this is easily the best. The chiaroscuro technique Maughan demonstrates is a well regarded classical technique that yields beautiful results. Although the book is all about portraits, the principles are relevant whatever you are drawing, and since tonal value is the one thing that must be right for realist paintings, it is a good basis for painting, too. The final part of the book is about colour, and using pastels, and here it is more a matter of taste - and certainly not mine, I'm not into green faces etc. There are better books (and websites) on colour theory than this. However, it is only a fairly short final chapter, and easily forgiven for the excellence of the rest. One issue was getting the materials in the UK. I have now had the book for two years, but never been able to follow him exactly. He uses a carefully chosen tone of paper that is halfway between the dark sanguine pencil and the white pencil that he uses, which is Strathmore 500 charcoal paper in Velvet gray. Unfortunately, this isn't available in this country - or wasn't until now. I have just discovered that Castle Hill crafts in Stroud have started importing it, so have put in an order for some (I'm not associated with them, just delighted that we can finally get all the materials).

If you are looking for some advice about drawing the head it is a breaf book, but very useful. The results are not photorrealistic, but it has very handy advice about proportions, sfumato and chiaroscuro.

An excellent book for those interested in portraiture.