ART 338 / Proportion/Alignment observations as digital overlays

Due Tuesday, Sept. 16

Assignment: Using photos you take of various human heads (straight-on front and side views), use Photoshop to overlay alignment, proportion, and layout observations. Submit no less than 4 examples of these studies. At least one of these must be a photo of your own face as a frontal view.

Write a 1-2 page reflection commenting on your findings. How specifically did conventional ideas of proportions check out? What specific proportion variations did you observe? What specific alignment observations did you make that might help you when working from life? What from all of your observations surprised you the most?

Submitting the Work:

The images and written commentary should be emailed as one MS word doc titled yourlastname_proportions.docx. Image files should be made in Photoshop as demonstrated and saved as jpegs sized at approx. 1000 pixels tall via the image size dialog box (in Photoshop: Image>Image Size) and then inserted images into your text doc (in MS Word: Insert>Picture>From File).

Evaluation: This assignment will be graded based on your ability to illustrate and comment on assignment goals (see above). Don’t just draw lines…rather use the superimposed geometry as a way of observing and understanding the head.

Begin by checking out some of the common standards facial proportions…

Dividing the head:

The eyes are at the mid-height of the head.

The bottom of the nose is halfway between the eyes and the chin.

The mouth is halfway between the nose and the chin.

The head also can be divided into thirds - from the top of the head to the bottom of the forehead, from the bottom of the forehead to the bottom of the nose, and then from there to the bottom of the chin.

Alignments:

The corners of the mouth line up with the centers of the eyes.

The top of the ears line up above the eyes, on the eyebrows.

The bottom of the ears line up with the bottom of the nose.

Relative sizes (proportions):

The head is between four and five eyes wide.

The eyes are separated by a distance of one eye width.

The width of the base of the nose is equal to the width of the eye.

The width of the mouth is equal to the distance between pupils, or the width of two eyes.