Plane Heads

Art teachers have proposed various schemes for simplifying the head into an arrangement of flat planes. Here are two plane breakdowns by Andrew Loomis, author of Figure Drawing for All It's Worth and Drawing the Head and Hands. 

The one on the left is a simple breakdown, with front, side, and bottom planes. The one on the right subdivides the planes further. To be precise, some of these "planes" aren't perfect planes in the geometric sense, such as the curving planes on the top of the cranium.

Fred Fixler, a student of famed Art Students League instructor Frank Reilly, came up with a slightly different plane breakdown for an idealized male head. There are some rounded forms too. The cranium is a ball with the sides sliced off. 

Sculpting the plane head brings the plane analysis into the realm of reality. This one is by painter and teacher John Asaro, who has a website called "Planes of the Head." He has taught head painting using his plane head. 

Many academic instructors have used plane heads as models before going to the live human, because it's much easier to accurately judge the values and color notes of each plane, compared to the infinitely variegated tones and curving forms of a real face. 

Drawing and painting from plane heads is a central part of Chinese and Russian academic practice, and various companies have resurrected some of these art school models, such as this 21-Inch plaster head.

This mini plaster head is very different from a European or American standard head, and the planes are broken down into a mosaic of small forms. But the ear is treated as a single plane.

People will debate the merits of these commercially available heads, but I've never been completely satisfied with any of them. I think it's a great exercise for any student to come up with their own analysis, and that's what I did when I was in art school. Before I knew about Sculpey, I made this the hard way, sculpting a plastilina original, and then making a two-piece mold and casting it in plaster. Mine was inspired mainly by Loomis and George Bridgman.

I have set up my little plane head and painted him in colored light.

Once a student has had practice drawing and painting from idealized plane heads, and even sculpting their own breakdowns, then I think the next best step is to look at real human models and break the planes down in a unique way for that individual model. 

This was the method taught in a seminar I took from Art Center instructor Paul Souza, and here's an exercise I did in that class, scumbling white oil paint over chip board sealed with shellac.


In truth, there is no single ideal plane head, and even an individual model's face can be analyzed in various ways.

Plane Heads

Here’s another painting exercise that I learned from Paul Souza, who taught the “scumbling the lights” method on a previous post.

As you look at a real posed model, try to analyze the head in terms of simple planes.

State the lines bounding the planes in pencil on chipboard. Seal the board as before, and apply the white oil paint with a bristle brush in varying degrees of thickness until you get the relative tone just right. Leave the shadows untouched by the paint.

I recommend that you use this plane breakdown as a guide. Both the forehead and the upper lip are divided into three planes. The chin and the nose each end in a flat shape.

The same analysis, in varying proportions and angles, can describe very different face types. If you try this plane analysis, and it just doesn’t fit the face, try an alternate breakdown, but keep it simple.

It should look like a puppet being carved from wood, as was stated in the Carolus-Duran post recently.

Seeing forms in simple terms helps you to draw or paint them better. As you proceed with a real portrait, you can subdivide the planes and blend their edges. If you establish a portrait in these terms at the beginning, you’re much more likely to get a three-dimensional appearance and a good likeness.

Fixler's Plane Head

Fred Fixler was a great art teacher from southern California who died Jan 21, 2010. He was a student of Frank Reilly, and brought much of his teaching as well as his own experience of illustration to his students.


On his official website is more about him, and some of the notes and handouts that he generously gave his students. One of them is a nice plane analysis of a head. If you wanted to sculpt a little 3D reference maquette of this head, it would be a good one to use for reference.

Fred Fixler
Thanks, Steve Kloepfer

Previously on GurneyJourney: Plane Heads, Character Maquettes, Reilly and Beyond

Depth and Edges

When one object sits in front of another in space, what happens at the location where the contours intersect each other? How can you create a sense of space between the object in front and the one behind?

Here’s a gray rectangle in front of a cross of white lines. All the edges are kept sharp. The result is that the rectangle appears to be sitting atop the lines, but it lies on the same two-dimensional plane.

If you soften all the edges of the white lines to an equal degree, the gray rectangle floats upward. This is how a camera would interpret a situation where two objects are on separate focal planes, assuming the camera was focused on the rectangle.

Instead, if you soften the edges of the rectangle and keep the white lines sharp, it looks like the camera has shifted its focus to the back plane. This creates a perceptual ambiguity. The gray rectangle still comes forward because it is superimposed, but the white lines also want to come forward because they’re in sharper focus.

Neither of these “photographic” interpretations is quite like the way we perceive things with our eyes. We don’t really see an entire area of a scene out of focus; we’re constantly adjusting our focus to create a sharp impression of the world.


Here is how I would suggest we might simulate our visual perception in paint. It’s similar to the photographic mode in #2, but this time the lines get progressively more out of focus as they pass behind the rectangle.

In addition, the vertical white line is softened to a greater degree than the horizontal line. The reason for this is the stereoscopic effect of our eyes. Since our eyes are set on a horizontal plane, vertical lines seen behind an object are doubled (and effectively blurred) more than the horizontal bars. You demonstrate this if you focus both of your eyes on your fingertip held in front of the mullions of a window.

In this detail from a Bouguereau, the contour of the farther leg of the angel figure is softened where it crosses the nearer leg.

In another of his paintings, the landscape lines are softened where they intersect the woman’s lower back.

And finally in this detail from a Waterhouse, the line of the green hill and the blue dress are softer where they cross behind the heads.

Three Steps in Blocking the Hand

The teachers of the Famous Artist's School correspondence course were good at drawing hands, especially Al Dorne, who I believe did these examples. 

They had a useful three-step process for approaching the challenge: 1. Gesture, 2. Construction, and 3. Refinement.

1. Gesture. The first pass shows placement and action, using curving or straight lines. This should be sketched lightly so that you can erase it later.

2. Construction. The second pass conceives the fingers as solid block-like forms. Be aware of relative size of forms.

3. Refinement. Add small forms using lighting that reinforces the structure. Don't lose the large gesture and simple forms worked out in the previous two steps. 

Here are some quotes from the course materials:

"It is helpful to think of the hand as being composed of three masses—the palm, the thumb part, and the mass of the fingers."

"The block method of construction is particularly useful in working out foreshortened views of the hand because it is easier to imagine what happens in perspective to a cube than a finger."

"The nail fits into the top plane of the finger and rises slightly toward the tip. Note how the top plane slants downward from the knuckle to the nail."

"You need never be at a loss for hands to study. Even when drawing, you have another hand to serve as a model at any time. If you place a mirror in front of yourself to reflect your free hand you will have an infinite variety of poses to choose from."
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Copies of the Famous Artist School binders appear in the used-book market from time to time. The links below take you to a couple sets on Amazon. Make sure the editions of the binders are from the 1950s, as the quality of the drawings goes down in later versions.

Famous Artists Course 3 binder set
Famous Artists Course Lessons 1 - 24

Many of the same lessons on hands (and heads and figures) were reprinted in a single volume book: The Figure: An Artist's Approach to Drawing and Construction

Watercolor Streetscapes of Irwin Greenberg

St. Germaine Nocturne by I. Greenberg

Irwin Greenberg (1922-2009) was an American artist and teacher whose watercolor street scenes were beloved by his students and fellow painters. Mr. Greenberg—or "Greeny," as he was known to his friends and students—taught at the Art Students League in New York. One of his former students, Ricky Mujica, told me more about those watercolors.

James: What got me thinking about Greeny was that I was looking at a book called "How to Discover Your Personal Painting Style" and there were a few examples of his watercolors, including this one "St. Germaine Nocturne." It's a gorgeous little mood piece. 

Ricky: That's awesome! I want a copy of that book!

James: I was curious about what surface he was working on. It looks like a plate finish — but I could be wrong.

Ricky: Yes you are correct, most of these are painted on thick, super-smooth plate finish Bristol paper. For a while, back in the '80's he also painted with watercolors over gessoed paper. He made charcoal paintings on the gessoed paper too.

James: What brushes was he using? It looks like some giant brushes (at first), and with maybe some lifting.

Ricky: He used a very big mop brush to lay in the biggest shapes and then wiped out the lights and mid tones. He avoided colors that stain during the block-in stage, ie, ultramarine blue and alizarin. But he wasn't afraid to use them in the later stages of the painting. During the block-in stage, he preferred to use colors with pigments that stay on the surface and are easy to lift. He would also sometimes add a little Chinese white into his block-in colors because that also makes the colors stay on the surface and therefore easy to lift. The drawback with this is that it becomes hard to get dark because the upper layers become difficult to put down without lifting the floating under layers. His way around this was to use very soft red sable and let the dark colors puddle which made great effects.

James: Wow, that technique gives you a lot of flexibility.

Ricky: He really wanted to be able to keep the painting as malleable as clay throughout the whole process. He didn't want to get locked down at any stage of the painting (until he had to). Very often he would start with a big brush and layout the massive shapes first, and then he would come in with a pencil, or if he was working on a monochromatic watercolor, a fountain or homemade bamboo pen. Sometimes he might put down a very minimal pencil line first, but only for placement. As I said, he wanted to stay as flexible as possible for as long as possible, and pencil has a way of locking you in. Very often, he would avoid putting any pencil lines down until he was sure that an area was going to stay the way it was. But switching between brush and pencil was an organic process. It wasn't a question of one and then the other, but more as if the pencil was just another brush. It's a very effective way of working. You should try it. I think you would get a kick out of the flexibility it affords. When I see Sargent's watercolors, especially the later ones, I can't imagine that he didn't do the same thing. 

James: This one of under the elevated train is such a great value design. I get the feeling he was not painting stuff literally, but was simplifying and grouping values.

Ricky: Greeny was adamant about organizing a painting into its big shapes. His biggest influence was Rembrandt's etchings and very often his most important motif was the "Discovered Light" composition device that you see a lot in Rembrandt and in Vermeer. A dark interesting foreground, then the main action in the brightest light, then a dark behind that and often a mid-light behind that. The silhouette of the dark foreground should be as interesting as you can make it. The paintings above are both built around this motif. What is important to know is that the paintings look like they are organized into flat shapes, but a more accurate description is that they are shapes in space. They are overlapping shapes and he thinks of composition in 3D not 2D. The shapes are laid out kind of like train tracks receding into space along the "Z: axis of the painting as opposed to simply 2D shapes on the picture plane (X and Y axis). Hope that makes sense.

James: Yeah, I love the idea of thinking of composition with the Z dimension, like the Dutch term 'houding.'

Ricky: One important aspect that he always related to me was to not throw away any part of the painting. Even a vignette. To make everything as interesting as possible, even vignetted brush stokes. Even a flat area should be interesting. One shouldn't waste an opportunity to make something more interesting. The objects in the scene should be interesting. If you put a lamp in an interior painting, make that lamp the most interesting lamp. Make it the best lamp. Not just a generic lamp. Even negative shapes should be interesting. Details should be interesting and judiciously placed and not trivial. He was very against dotting every "i" and crossing every "t". Windows are suggested on a building or bricks suggested on a brick wall rather than putting everyone in. More important to selectively put in windows or bricks in an interesting way that goes with the composition and enhances the composition, than to put in every window and possibly ruin the unity of the art.

James: Were these paintings from life or memory or photography? Did he do sketches first and synthesize the design?

Ricky: Greeny worked primarily from life, though when the demand for his watercolors went up and he got older, he wasn't averse to working from a snapshot here and there. Most often he would make dozens of sketches from life in his sketchbooks and then go home and use them as reference for studio watercolors. Not much different than many of the Hudson River painters. People in his landscapes would be thought of as groups instead of individuals and very often he worked from memory or just made them up. He has sketchbooks full of little plein air studies of people and groups of people. (I wish I had been able to get one of those! Those are the most valuable to students who knew his work!!!!) They were carefully observed gesture drawings that he made with a fountain pen filled with brown ink and spit and a finger, or sometimes a little portable watercolor brush. He would have loved the watercolor pencils you sometimes use.

He would fill a sketchbook in two weeks and would draw everywhere. In trains, in meetings, on the street, on line at the bank. And these quick gestural sketches would be fodder for figures in the finished watercolors he did in his studio. It was like reference gathering. While you use your sketchbook in a journalistic way, like a journalistic photographer, he used his sketch like a reference gathering device.

He didn't plot out perspective, but rather eyeballed the perspective. No construction. But he was a master at perspective.

Ricky: Greeny often encouraged us to do little block-ins from memory. He encouraged us to do little landscapes or figure groupings from our heads. It was amazing to see how well and how effectively he could make a cityscape or a drawing of a group of people from his head as a practice exercise! He would start by making a random squiggly line, and then turn that into a beautiful little cityscape sketch! Or make something like an upside down potato sack and turn that into a very believable group of people! And in literally a minute! Lol, he would have given Bob Ross a run for his money with those! Amazing to watch.

James: You were so lucky to have him as a teacher and to watch him paint those things.

Ricky: You have to understand that he lost an eye in World War II and had poor sight in his one good eye! But he could put down a figure like nobody's business. He could get the life and the gesture so quickly, it would singe your eyebrows!

James: Didn't you end up with one of his sketchbooks after he died?

Ricky: When Max (Ginsburg) and I cleaned out his studio, I found a sketchpad behind a radiator. It's great, it is a full sketchpad that he made on a small vacation he took in Norway. It's full of monochromatic landscape studies from life while on vacation many of which became reference for finished paintings that I remember from his one man show in the late '80's! It's one of my most prized possessions! I feel very lucky to have it and there is so much to learn from it. I can't wait to show you. I also managed to rescue a few of his more finished watercolors that were still left. I got a bunch that he made before he started to use the smooth paper, and a couple of watercolors in the smooth paper style.

James: Thanks, Ricky. Greeny may be gone, but he's still alive thanks to his artwork and your memories.

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Book with a few Irwin Greenberg paintings: How to Discover Your Personal Painting Style
Book that talks about the plate finish technique: Breaking the Rules of Watercolor by Burt Silverman

Previously: Houding
Ricky Mujica's website

A Preliminary Study by Carl Haag

In this preliminary study for a bridal procession, Carl Haag uses the camel's eye as the vanishing point of the scene. The eye level of the viewer is drawn horizontally through that point. That line describes a plane about eight feet above the ground, approximately two feet above the heads of standing adult figures.

Sketch for the lower half of A Bridal Procession at Damascus,
Haag, Carl R.W.S (1820 - 1915), Syria (drawn) ca. 1892 (drawn)

Using pen and ink for studies is a method that goes back to the old masters. The shadow values are suggested with simple brown washes. It's a good practice because it forces you to commit to an idea and see it through.

Carl Haag, Wedding procession in Damascus

When it comes to doing the final painting, you may choose a completely different idea.