571.

OF THE WAY TO LEARN TO COMPOSE FIGURES [IN GROUPS] IN HISTORICAL
PICTURES.

When you have well learnt perspective and have by heart the parts and forms of objects, you must go about, and constantly, as you go, observe, note and consider the circumstances and behaviour of men in talking, quarrelling or laughing or fighting together:  the action of the men themselves and the actions of the bystanders, who separate them or who look on.  And take a note of them with slight strokes thus, in a little book which you should always carry with you.  And it should be of tinted paper, that it may not be rubbed out, but change the old [when full] for a new one; since these things should not be rubbed out but preserved with great care; for the forms, and positions of objects are so infinite that the memory is incapable of retaining them, wherefore keep these [sketches] as your guides and masters.

[Footnote:  Among Leonardo’s numerous note books of pocket size not one has coloured paper, so no sketches answering to this description can be pointed out.  The fact that most of the notes are written in ink, militates against the supposition that they were made in the open air.]

572.

OF A METHOD OF KEEPING IN MIND THE FORM OF A FACE.

If you want to acquire facility for bearing in mind the expression of a face, first make yourself familiar with a variety of [forms of] several heads, eyes, noses, mouths, chins and cheeks and necks and shoulders:  And to put a case:  Noses are of 10 types:  straight, bulbous, hollow, prominent above or below the middle, aquiline, regular, flat, round or pointed.  These hold good as to profile.  In full face they are of 11 types; these are equal thick in the middle, thin in the middle, with the tip thick and the root narrow, or narrow at the tip and wide at the root; with the nostrils wide or narrow, high or low, and the openings wide or hidden by the point; and you will find an equal variety in the other details; which things you must draw from nature and fix them in your mind.  Or else, when you have to draw a face by heart, carry with you a little book in which you have noted such features; and when you have cast a glance at the face of the person you wish to draw, you can look, in private, which nose or mouth is most like, or there make a little mark to recognise it again at home.  Of grotesque faces I need say nothing, because they are kept in mind without difficulty.

The position of the head.

573.

HOW YOU SHOULD SET TO WORK TO DRAW A HEAD OF WHICH ALL THE PARTS
SHALL AGREE WITH THE POSITION GIVEN TO IT.

To draw a head in which the features shall agree with the turn and bend of the head, pursue this method.  You know that the eyes, eyebrows, nostrils, corners of the mouth, and sides of the chin, the jaws, cheeks, ears and all the parts of a face are squarely and straightly set upon the face.