Revisiting the divided-up
Front View of the face
Understanding the front view facial divisions
Just for fun we're going to break the front view
into four quarters.
Reading down the left side of Mr. Average: On
the left side of the illustration you see "Total Head".
The size of the Total Head is equal to 1.
-
The "1/4" mark is just a line
through the horizontal half way point of the upper half of the
head. It's half way between the middle of the eye line
and the top of the head line. It mars off 1/4th the the
distance from the top of the head to the bottom of the chin.
-
The "1/2" mark is of course the
middle of the eye line. It splits the face
(actually the front
view of the head), in half.
-
The "3/4" mark marks the
dividing point between the upper and lower halves of the lower
half of the face. The lower half of the face
is is everything below the middle of the eye line. It's
also 3/4ths the distance down the face from the top of the head
line.
-
The "3/4" mark also marks the
placement of the bottom
of the nose line in the old way of looking at the face. We
now slide the actual bottom of the nose line up a fraction
(to 2/5ths the way down the lower half of the face). But
we still note the placement of the old bottom of the nose
line because it's right at the 3/4 mark. (I know, I'm getting
ridiculous here.)
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The arrow pointing down from the bottom of
the nose line points down to the bottom of the face. This is
the inferred 4/4ths or the "1 unit" line or what we
also call the "bottom of the chin line".
Why hang on to this old remnant? (Like
the old bottom of the nose line.) Because the Mr. Average face
splits up very nicely into thirds between the old bottom of
the nose line (at the 3/4 marker) and the bottom of the chin
line...and it's easy to remember.
The middle of the mouth line:
1/3rd the way down
So let's look at the divisions of the last fourth
of the face, the bottom fourth of the face - that is,
everything between the 3/4 marker and the bottom of
the chin line. We'll focus now on the markers at the bottom
right of the picture. (Hang with me folks, you're going to get this!
:-)
-
The "0/3" or "zero
thirds" line is at the exact same place as the 3/4
marker (on the left): at the old bottom of the nose line. That you can
see in the picture just above. Two names for the same
line.
-
The "1/3" mark shows the middle
of the mouth line. (Hey, now we're getting some where!). Got
that? The 1/3 mark marks off the placement for the middle
of the mouth line.
-
NEW: The "2/3" mark is the top
of the chin line and the "3/3" line is the bottom
of the chin line. We got through it! Hooray! (I'm taking a
break.)
Finding a home for the chin
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