This unit teaches how to represent the four main facial features - eyes, ears, nose, and lips - with expressiveness and proper proportion. Students are asked to take notes on vocabulary terms like portraiture, expression, feature, and foreshortening. They are also instructed to complete a practice activity. The next section explains that individual facial features can be drawn using basic geometric shapes, with the eye as a sphere, nose as a sphere and cylinder, and lips as ovoids. Students are asked to draw sample faces using shapes.

1. home page
objectives and overview: unit 2
this project is intended to help you understand how to
represent each of the four facial features
(eyes, ears, nose, and lips) have an expressiveness
and proportion all on their own.
1. please take notes on each page (including the
vocab!)
2. please complete the practice activity.
next page
• portraiture: a physical
likeness of a person and a
psychological representation
of that person (self portrait
applies this to the artist
him/herself)
• expression: the quality or
power of displaying or
representing an attitude or
emotion
• feature: a prominent or
conspicuous part or
characteristic
• foreshortening:
representing objects/models
in space using perspective
(objects closer to the viewer
appear larger and recede
into space)

2. landscapes
An Article about Chuck Close:
Chuck Close was born in Monroe, Wisconsin, in 1940. Close began taking art lessons as a child and at
age 14 saw an exhibition of Jackson Pollock's abstract paintings, which helped inspire him to become a
painter. Close attended graduate school at Yale University, and received an MFA in 1964. After earning
his graduate degree, he gradually rejected the elements of Abstract Expressionism that had initially
characterized his work.
Close's first solo exhibition included a series of enormous black-and-white portraits that he had
painstakingly transformed from small photographs to colossal paintings. To make his paintings, Close
superimposed a grid on the photograph and then transferred a proportional grid to his gigantic
canvases. He then applied acrylic paint with an airbrush and scraped off the excess with a razor blade
to duplicate the exact shadings of each grid in the photo. It is important to note that none of Close's
images are created digitally or photo-mechanically. Close’s paintings are labor intensive and time
consuming, and his prints are more so. While a painting can occupy Close for many months, it is not
unusual for one print to take upward of two years to complete.
In 1988 a spinal blood clot left Close almost completely paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. A
brush-holding device strapped to his wrist and forearm, however, allowed him to continue working. In
the 1990s he replaced the minute detail of his earlier paintings with a grid of tiles daubed with colorful
elliptical and ovoid shapes. Viewed up close, each tile was in itself an abstract painting; when seen from
a distance, the tiles came together to form a dynamic deconstruction of the human face.
From Chuck Close Biography, article from BigraphyBase, www.biographybase.com and www.chuckclose.coe.uh.edu
• portraiture: a physical
likeness of a person and a
psychological representation
of that person (self portrait
applies this to the artist
him/herself)
• expression: the quality or
power of displaying or
representing an attitude or
emotion
• feature: a prominent or
conspicuous part or
characteristic
• foreshortening:
representing objects/models
in space using perspective
(objects closer to the viewer
appear larger and recede
into space)

3. evolution of landscapes
Facial Porportion
• Just as we studied proportion and placement
in landscape painting, similar rules and
guidelines help us master the Human Face.
• Perhaps the most emotional and important
subject matter represented in art – the human
face embodies our ideas of persona,
expression, attitude and characteristic.
• This is why it is so difficult and so challenging
to obtain a “likeness of a person.” Practicing
the proportion of the ideal human face will
help you become versatile in your skills as
artist and ultimately allow you to become
successful as a portrait artist.
• portraiture: a physical
likeness of a person and a
psychological representation
of that person (self portrait
applies this to the artist
him/herself)
• expression: the quality or
power of displaying or
representing an attitude or
emotion
• feature: a prominent or
conspicuous part or
characteristic
• foreshortening:
representing objects/models
in space using perspective
(objects closer to the viewer
appear larger and recede
into space)

4. why is it important?
understanding the human face
Drawing Faces is Simply Drawing Shapes
1. Like drawing a landscape, the individual facial
features can be drawn using basic forms.
• The eye is based on the sphere
• The nose is based on the sphere and cylinder
• The lips are based on ovoids (oval-shaped spheres)
• The ears are based on interconnecting cylinders
2. Draw the below faces based on shapes:
• portraiture: a physical
likeness of a person and a
psychological representation
of that person (self portrait
applies this to the artist
him/herself)
• expression: the quality or
power of displaying or
representing an attitude or
emotion
• feature: a prominent or
conspicuous part or
characteristic
• foreshortening:
representing objects/models
in space using perspective
(objects closer to the viewer
appear larger and recede
into space)