The longtime drawing instructor focuses on drawing the head, from all angles, and in character design and construction. Karl designed the characters of the Bathroom Troll in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Stuart in Stuart Little, and the Gorilla in Hollow Man, and he provides detailed analysis of the creation of these heads.
Head Shots is designed by master figure artist Karl Gnass, one of the most sought-after teachers in Los Angeles, whose students include luminaries of the animation and CGI industries. In addition to his first books, Spirit of the Pose and Spirit & Force, this 112 page tutorial Head Shots dives deeply into Karl's unique approach to head drawing, while steeping his students in the classical skills, like form, tone, and volume. Simply described these imperative visual concepts and tools help even the most skilled artists find improvement in their work. "It's one thing to learn how to draw," says Karl. "It's another to learn how to see and interpret what you see using useful 2D and 3D conceptual tools."
From the Introduction:
Another head drawing book! Do we need it? Well, I will try to answer that in this way. I teach around town in various places including the Animation Guild in Burbank, DreamWorks Feature and TV, Disney Feature and TV, as well as a number of other studios and workshops over recent years. And I find that both in my public classrooms as well as in my studio classrooms the greatest weakness in head drawing is getting the angles right! Angles in perspective, that is. I've watched as professional artists and students continually come up with some sort of shorthand formula for doing angles, formulas that are obvious fudges or that simply don't work.
So, in my Head Drawing Classes I put particular emphasis on understanding the angles of perspective while drawing a structurally solid head, over and above achieving likeness. Actually, when I see a drawing that achieves a good likeness it is often spoiled by the fact that the drawing of the head itself is poorly executed. That is why I've decided to stick with first things first until they are understood. If we make efforts in the right order, somewhere along the line, we will find ourselves drawing our favorite parts, the things that give us the most pleasure, but with skill! You can see then that this approach asks for considerable attention. Yet, in the beginning, we are overly anxious, no, more like, biting at the bit, to move on to what's fun! Yes, this is kids & cookie jar stuff!
So, as you may have suspected, if we stay on track in this way, we don't often have tons of classroom time to explore some of the more fun details! Therefore, though this book starts with the important fundamentals to give you, the reader, plenty to work with, there is also a complete package of concepts and details covered within, the lands of details that make us all happy to be drawing. Now, the time for this, is in your hands. That's 'why', this book. And I think, that's as much as need be said, as you'll find that page by page, the following lessons are pretty much self-explanatory.