The text discusses the importance of understanding the natural position of faces in art to appreciate how different perspectives can be achieved when heads are tilted or moved beyond natural lines. It identifies two main factors affecting head positions: forward/backward bending and left/right tilting. These basic movements combine to form more complex inclinations and help define and categorize different facial positions in art.
Drawing Study of Faces
The natural position of faces, once well understood, makes it easy to grasp that when a head is tilted or inclined beyond the natural lines, or when the viewer's eye is placed entirely outside the oval and horizontal line of the face, an entirely different perspective arises. This can happen in many ways, and thus we do not act improperly when we categorize various head positions under a general term of random positions. Despite these positions differing from natural ones, we believe that they relate to some rules about nature that complement each other well enough to explain.
There are only two main causes (besides another one that is a mixture of these two) from which all random positions of faces depend. It is also true that these steps and methods can be described endlessly. The first situation involves the forward or backward bending of the head, viewed from the front or the back. The second situation involves tilting to the left or right. All other types of inclinations arise from a combination of these secondary movements. For a head can lean back or forth and simultaneously tilt left or right, and these can again be distinguished in heads directly.
Translation Notes
1. 'Teykenkundige Tronie-schouwing' is translated as 'Drawing Study of Faces.'
2. 'Tronien' is often used to refer to facial expressions or types of faces in art.