Human Model – Female Hair, and Some Analysis

The hair of females are much more complicated than the one of males, and I have got quite a lot familiarity with the sculpture tool in Blender now. But it was a surprise that when I was looking for reference, I found there are very few females in the painting compared with the males, and especially in the hell panel.

屏幕快照 2016-05-21 01.25.53

Most of them are in the pond in the centre of the central panel

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A rough overview of the sex ratio of the lower half of the central panel, where humans are most crowded. I simply suppose that Bosch distinguished male and female by their hair’s length, since all those females have extremely long hair and there is actually seldom “strange” hairstyle which cannot be told the sex. There could be some controversial ones (blocked by others) though.

Here are models I made and the reference:

The hair is with armature for changing pose and other potentially later use.

I found this woman really special because she is the only one who “are able to” tie her hair up, in a quite strange way (at least seen at today), which obviously means that she is in some ways different to all those other females in this painting. Since almost all the humans are totally nude (except some are connected with wired fruits), it does not make sense that one woman has this simply as kind of decoration. I had a quick search of medieval female hairstyle but did not get the answer immediately. But I hope there would be some explanation of this in the related works of this painting and I will also look up for the question again later. (Hey you have successfully drawn my attention!)