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June 09, 2008
Not Fibonacci
Lots of things follow Fibonacci’s famous series of numbers
Pineapples, snail shells and sunflower heads to name but three. But sadly [perhaps] the human face doesn’t. It follows a much simpler rule of halves.
Take the whole head and half way down are the eyes, half way down again is the nose, then half the remaining space and there’s the mouth.
When children draw faces they concentrate on the important bits, the eyes and the mouth and they put the eyes in the middle.
A Fibonacci head isn’t far off, and indeed it looks ok if a little cartoon like. We’re comfortable with this head because it’s seems more like we think our heads looks:
But in fact, when Push comes to shove and the dividers are out, we’re more like this:
Sitting at the desk, fiddling with pen and paper, whilst mulling over Matters of Great Importance, I draw scratchy heads and find, on close inspection, that they follow the rule of halves, which is reassuring in a way.
Posted by john at June 9, 2008 10:20 PM