Part 5: Personal project – sketching social status, fear and cruelty

All websites mentioned in this post were accessed on 6 December 2015, all images shown are in the public domain.

06 December, 2015. Social intelligence is required to allow successful interaction within society. Successful in the context of my project is the ability to hide from others a fact which, once publicly known, would reduce the individual’s fitness, e.g. my doctor, when found out, would without doubt lose his prestigious job and associated social amenities. From his point of view a behaviour envolving the masking of a true emotion is socially intelligent and thus to be enforced. In Schmidt, K. L. and Cohn, F. (2001) (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2238342/) the social aspect in the evolution of facial expression is discussed.

In order to continue getting acquainted with the expression of fear through firsthand impression I thought that I might study the Austrian Krampus runs, taking place at the beginning of December in each and every village. I took several photos in our own village, but I noticed that the commercialisation of the tradition and a very justifiable ban of hitting people with birch twigs has turned the whole thing into a fun event. No frightened people here, just some girls feeling a bit uneasy, and a scared cat.

Then I had a look at other photos we took over the years. No frightened people either, which is a good thing in one way, but not helpful in another. Here is our younger son with something like worry on his face, but this is certainly not strong enough:

The closest I could get to a fearful face comes here, from a funfair ride (the face was taken from a much larger photo, sorry about the quality):

Since while there are no good actors in my family, my searches on the internet also convinced me that the people posing with fearful faces are no good actors either and press photos showing what I have in mind are exceedingly rare, I based my initial sketches on fear and cruelty on the images and works of art I have collected so far.

First I made a pencil sketch mini series. The first sketch is about status. Before starting it I had a look at paintings depicting royalty and found that a certain pose always correlated with an impression of power: The body is slightly turned to one side, but the stern eyes, looking down on the viewer from an otherwise indifferent face leave no doubt about who is in charge. An example is Hans Holbein’s portrait of King Henry VIII:

Hans Holbein the Younger, around 1497-1543
Portrait of Henry VIII of England, Wikimedia Commons

Here comes my sketch – apologies again for the problems with the paper in my sketchbook. I love the paper but not the wavy righthand side.

This sketch I gradually changed to first show a slight worry, then a glimpse of fear, just enough to reveal the true emotion.

The  changes to the sketch were:

• lifting the upper eyelids, thereby exposing the upper white
• making the lower eyelids tense
• lifting and drawing together the eyebrows
• emphasizing the vertical folds between the eyebrows and the central horizontal folds on the forehead
• slightly opening the mouth to expose the teeth
• making the lips tense
• reducing the tension around the corners of the mouth

I am not unhappy with the result. As before with my experiment involving Albert Einstein and Alzheimer’s disease I noticed that the changes in facial expression need to be slight only and always involve a characteristic set of alterations.

Cruelty next. Cruelty is no fleeting emotion, it is a deep-rooted character trait, which with time seeps to the surface to show permanently. I believe that, in contrast to fear, it is impossible to hide cruelty behind a sweet face. Looking at my character above I notice that a certain amount of cruelty is already present, so I will need to identify the typical characteristics and reinforce them: It appears that an outward impression of cruelty, described as “indifference to suffering and even pleasure in inflicting it” on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruelty) often comes with a totally indifferent or marginally amused face (dictators!), while sometimes the lower white of the eyes is visible, as in:

L0040123 Experiments in physiology. Facial expressions; Cruelty Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Public domain

07 December, 2015. Here is the last change to my pencil sketch. I believe that it contains a mix of cruelty and disdain and this is, coming to think of it, just what is required.

What I did was the following:

• lift the eyebrows
• emphasize some horizontal folds on the forehead
• slightly close the upper eyelids
• reduce the tension on the lower eyelids
• make sure some white appears below the pupils
• ever so slightly open the mouth
• suggest a slight curling of the corners of the mouth

In order to increase cruelty I might close the upper eyelids further until they appear to cover part of the pupil, but for my project this slight change is just what I need. A greater change would not go together with maintaining his position as a doctor.

To be honest it was this part of my preparations I had dreaded before its start, because I did not know whether I would be able to produce the desired effects, but all seems well. The next step will be experimenting with materials and media for the portrait. Post to follow shortly.

 

Part 4, project 6, exercise 3: The face – portrait from memory or the imagination (stage 2: experimenting and finished drawing)

22 November, 2015. Initially I had only wanted to try out some mark making with my black oil pastels on very smooth brilliant white A2 sketch paper. Then I thought, oh well, I can put in something like a face to try waving the tension lines around it, then I added the computer screen to create a source of tension and then I ran wild :o). I produced the first layer with the black oil pastel stick, then added some finer and shiny lines on top of that with a 6B pencil, followed by some wide and some narrow areas of red ink intended to stand for a very serious source of tension about to strangle the man. These I moderated using a white marker and white oil pastel. I know that the last word has not been spoken in this matter and I am still incredibly angry at the portrayed person, so something went wrong with the experiment. I think that despite the strong marks the face does not convey a convincing feeling of being torn between different liabilities. Still I am happy to have drawn an imaginary face using nothing but wavy lines. Great care has to be taken when inventing a face from scratch, since it is easy to create parts which do not logically fit together, making the face look artificial. I can see some of that in my drawing and of course I have no idea whether there is a likeness to the real man in this portrait, but my subconscious may know better. If there is time, I will repeat the exercise in preparation for formal assessment.

 

Part 4, project 6, exercise 3: The face – portrait from memory or the imagination, stage 1 (preliminary thoughts and research)

All websites mentioned in this post were accessed on 22 November 2015.

22 November, 2015. It took me days to decide who to portray here. I find the idea behind the exercise fascinating. Earlier today I thought I would go for the incredibly thin, but lively face of a 90-year old yoga lady teacher I met briefly yesterday during an open day event organised by my art club. But just now I realised that this is an opportunity to portray, mostly from imagination, a particular neonatologist. For a reason connected with my son’s story the absence of his face from my memory has haunted my days and nights for years. After having been “acquainted” for such a long time and from some written correspondence I have a fairly clear idea of his character. I need him to be looking away from the observer’s scrutinizing eye, while the visible part of his face and posture needs to radiate some of the stress and discomfort associated (in most people) with lying and I remember the occasion, when he had to lie to us on a large scale and the mood in the hospital conference room was incredibly tense. This gave me the idea of using a set of lines of varying width to reproduce the tension connecting the room, a luminescent computer screen showing the truth to be distorted, and his face.

In order to see how these lines might be produced I did some research. On http://matsysdesign.com/category/information/profile/ I found a project initiated by the architect Andrew Kudless, exploring connections between between architecture and biology. For some examples see http://matsysdesign.com/category/projects/scripted-movement-1/  (please scroll down to “Untitled #7”, “Untitled #8” and “Untitled #15). Looking further I came across the weird line drawings made by Aminath Hilmy (http://www.outsiderart.info/hilmy.htm), where human shapes are described by and entangled with the lines, which make up their surroundings, so that they become one. See e.g. http://www.outsiderart.info/images2/hilmy4.jpg. Getting closer to what I want to express is Eeva Honkanen on http://eevahonkanen.com/kiire.html. Still not enough. I needed to find something different. The thought then crossed my mind that this was the point to revisit the very first exercises of this course and the emotion, which has had so much influence on my life: anxiety. I had a look at what I had drawn to express anxiety and decided to continue experimenting to find a way to create an imaginary portrait using nothing but tension lines of anxiety.

Here are my original anxiety marks. The first attempt is not suitable, because it means bursts of anxiety alternating with periods of calm. The one below it appears to me to be too organized due to the constant line width and parallel lines, although I might need such lines to model the face.

So think that I want a combination of the two types of line on the right and  would like to attempt and work with a combination of tools (ink pens of different widths, charcoal and pastel sticks, eraser etc.). Results of the experiments to follow in a separate post.

Part 4, project 6, exercise 2: Own Face (part 2)

19 November, 2015. Today I produced my second self-portrait looking into the bathroom mirror from the side while resting my sketchbook on the washbasin. The light in the bathroom was exactly the colours I used (watercolour crayons), i.e. not flattering, but I think the drawing looks like me. Unfortunately all the pages in my new sketchbook are somewhat “wavy” and this effect is fathfully reproduced by the scanner (violet shadows converging on the edge of the paper). This makes the drawing awkward to look at, but I will try and edit the original photo to remove the effect.

In answer to the questions on p. 140 of the study guide:

1. Which drawing materials produced the best results? Why?
The chalk stick I used in my first attempt is made of a relatively gritty material and the lines as well as edges of blocks of shade look hard. This together with the short drawing time of only 5 minutes gave my face an unnecessarily worn look (on top of feeling incredibly tired anyway). The watercolour crayons used in the second drawing are much softer and appear to be more suitable for tracing the soft curves on a face.

2. Does your self-portrait look like you?

They both look like me in some respect. The first portrait reflects my exceptional emotional state at the time, the outward likeness is more present in the second one.
I will not have the time to create another more worked-out self-portrait at this point of the course, but am planning to come back to it at the end of Part 5.

3. How difficult was it to move on from sketches of individual features to a full portrait?

I did not find the task too difficult, because I have drawn and painted a  number of portraits before and knew what to expect.

Part 4, project 6: Research point – the face

All websites mentioned in this post were accessed on 18 and 19 November 2015. All images shown are in the public domain.

18 November, 2015. What is a face? It is probably the most individual of all the characteristics in a human being, from the inside and the outside. It combines all the sensory organs connecting the environment with the inside of our bodies. These organs work in slightly different ways in every human being – or even in the same person in the case of the paired organs eye and ear. I noticed, for example, that my two eyes provide me with slightly different visual input, colours appear warmer when viewed with my right eye, colder with the left. So the world as we perceive it with our faces is not the same for all of us.
From the outside, the face is our most valuable and at the same time treacherous means of communication. This tool works in close contact (touch) or from a distance, unceasingly, from the moment fetal development has progressed to a point where a face can express a bodily state until the moment we die. The lives we lead leave their traces on our faces, not just by means of an increasing number of lines and folds, but by the way how our thoughts and actions express themselves through our faces. A life lead in kindness or cruelty will in time lead to a kind or cruel face.
As an artist I can be interested in any of the two aspects, or in a combination of them. I could be interested in the correct representation of facial features alone (portraits), I could emphasize and exaggerate some of these features to convey a certain impression (portrait caricature), I might want to use a face to transport a message issued inside the body, a physical (pain) or psychological aspect (all sorts of emotions). All of these are masterly combined in a favourite books of mine, Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray”: the young and beautiful bonvivant protagonist, having fallen in love with a portrait painted of him by a friend, makes a rash wish for the portrait to take over the feared aging process for him.

A truly primordial way of working “on the face” is the art of face painting or tattoing. Many famous examples exist from all parts of the world, most prominently probably from the North American Indians (e.g. the Tlinigit tribe) or the Maori people of New Zealand and they are all used to transport messages:

Maori Chief with tattoos and pipe (black and white photo created between 1860 and 1879), Wikimedia Commons

Face painting has become fashionable again in a modern way in the last decades, most notably for children, Halloween parties and to create weird, disturbing effects as e.g. in https://www.pinterest.com/pin/269512358926551440/. Few artists appear to use the face beyond the former, probably because of its obvious limitations (little space, 3D facial features restrict the number of possible designs, temporary works of art only). I found however some very interesting portraits created on the faces of models by makeup artists  (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2661276/make-transformations.html).

The face has probably been of interest to almost every artist working in any thinkable field from the dawn of art. The depiction of individual characteristics of real persons, including self-portraits, emerged for the first time however only in the later centuries in Classical Greece and re-emerged as late as the Renaissance Period (15th and 16th c.), when the painting of portraits became widely popular, increasingly refined and even accepted as a female profession. At the same time fictional portraits traditionally used in preliminary studies (“Tronies”), developed into a separate art form (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tronie). A famous example of this genre is shown below:

“The Man with the Golden Helmet”, unknown Dutch artist, around 1650, Wikimedia Commons

19 November, 2015.Emotion expressed in a human face has always been of intense interest to artists. In an ongoing exhibition called “About Face: Human Expression on Paper” (http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/objects?exhibitionId={3F7DA558-1D1A-4EBB-9B9F-DDC01AA68588}) the Metropolitan Museum shows a series of historic examples of various possible approaches to the subject, including that of caricature and early black and white photography.

Moving towards the contemporary artists, symbolist painter Edvard Munch’s famous works “Scream” and “Anxiety” immediately come to mind. In these paintings Munch appears to use idealized faces as a “canvas” for emotion. The effect is reinforced by the background scenery, which seems not only to be the reason for the emotion depicted (raising storm?), but at the same time to be a carrier of the same emotion, thus causing source and effect to merge into one. At present the Albertina in Vienna presents Munch’s printed graphic work (https://www.wien.info/de/sightseeing/museen-ausstellungen/edvard-munch-albertina) and we hope to be able to visit over Christmas.

Edvard Munch, “Anxiety”, 1894, Google Art Project

It was with the advent of reasonably good mirrors that self-portraits became increasingly attractiv for artists (see a selection of works on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-portrait#Self-portraits_in_general). Famous contemporary examples come from, among many others, Vincent van Gogh, Egon Schiele and Frida Kahlo. Reasons for self-portraiture seem to range from pure curiosity via telling a story to coping with difficult personal situations:

Vincent van Gogh, self portrait no. 11, 1887, Wikimedia Commons

 

Egon Schiele, self portrait with physalis, 1912, Wikimedia Commons

Frida Kahlo, self portrait with thorn necklace and hummingbird, Nickolas Muray Collection, University of Texas, fair use

World famous is also the larger than life work of paralysed painter Chuck Close (*1940,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Close). Close suffers from a condition called “face blindness” (prosopagnosia), which makes him unable to recognize a face as such. The painting of portraits in a large variety of styles, in particular building them using photos and a grid of coloured or greyscale “pixel” squares (see e.g. http://www.au.timeout.com/sydney/kids/events/41704/art-baby-chuck-close), helps him to cope with his condition.

Instructed to have a look at the work of Graham Little (*1972, http://www.alisonjacquesgallery.com/artists/26-graham-little/works/13580/) I don’t know whether I like his style and/or choice of subject. The drawings are very carefully worked out and due to the particular choice of medium and layout appear to me to belong to a peaceful past, showing mostly females in deep thought – i.e. making no eye contact with the spectator, while doing nothing or something of little consequence.
Elizabeth Peyton’s (*1965) technique appears to me in strong contrast to the former. I found mostly portraits of serious-looking young males depicted with a strong stroke (http://www.moma.org/collection/artists/8042, http://www.escapeintolife.com/painting/elizabeth-peyton/). The faces remain sketchlike and their expression reminds me of the sombre faces put up by members of pop groups posing for a cover photo. Having said that I instantly found a work named “John” (http://www.moma.org/collection/works/38715?locale=de). Interestingly, like Graham Little she appears to avoid a layout allowing eye-to-eye contact with the observer. I could not find an explanation for this preference, except that – maybe – a direct look into the eye allows only one interpretation of a face, while looking away opens up an array of possibilities.

Today everything possible is done to the human face from art inspired by childrens’ drawings to hyperrealism and, as always, the computer age has made possible the creation of works of art hitherto rarely thought of, e.g.  distortions as presented in http://mashable.com/2015/04/30/3d-art-face-deformations/#g7qCg3qiEOqD, street art as in http://randommization.com/2011/05/02/street-art-for-a-city-with-a-human-face/ or even human-animal chimaeras as in https://www.pinterest.com/pin/523965737875365318/.

Part 4, project 6, exercise 1: Facial features – ear, mouth, eye

13 November, 2015. In order to give myself a break from assignment preparations I concentrated on completing the exercise on facial features. It is mostly noses, which appear to carry little meaning when isolated from their usual surroundings. Ears, eyes and mouths seem to have more “standalone effect”, by virtue of shape in the former and both shape and expressive power in the latter two. Still looking forward to putting them all back on their faces!

Part 4, project 6, exercise 2: The face – your own face (part 1)

12 November, 2015. I notice how the choice of subject for my assignment drawings has a strong effect on me. Especially George Stinney and the electric chair at times grow to nightmarish proportions and I can tell it tells when I started on exercise 2 of this project. Standing looking into the bathroom mirror after a long day working on my first attempt at commenting at something so emotional as a wrongfully executed child I could not believe how tired I looked. The bathroom lights and the dark grey chalk stick I used for my first 5 minute sketch added to the effect. Also, only parts of the drawing show a likeness – my face is not well-rounded even when I am well-fed, but it is nowhere as thin as that. But thin is how I felt.

Assignment 4: Stage 2 – portrait research

All websites mentioned in this post were accessed on 7 November 2015.

7 November, 2015. After having drawn a set of famous and not so famous noses I decided that it was time for some preliminary research both into the typical changes seen in the faces of Alzheimer patients and some contemporary artists working with portraits.

By coincidence I instantly came across a breathtaking series of self-portraits by painter William Utermohlen, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1995. He documented the changes seen and felt by himself from when he was diagnosed to when he was finally unable to pursue the project further in 2000 (http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/william-utermohlen-alzheimers-self-portraits). The final pictures in the series are incredible, the artist appears to have felt to have literally “lost his face”, in the last one the face seems to have reverted to a quasi embryonic state (this is what it looks like to me as a biologist). Seeing that, my project from an outsider’s viewpoint appears rather less relevant, although I hasten to emphasize that I would assume his position for nothing in the world.

A great series of black and white photographs of Alzheimer’s patients was made in 1961 by Alex Ten Napel (http://www.co-mag.net/2011/alex-ten-napel/). All the patients have a highly introverted look, which is in a way also present in the portrait of Albert Einstein by Yousuf Karsh (1948), which I use as the basis of my project (http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/264767). But while Einstein seems to be in deep thought and in connection with his inner self, in the Alzheimer patients at least to me the introversion feels less deep, in some of the portraits it appears to stop “right under the skin” as if the connection beween a personality and the surface becomes progressively weaker to be broken in the end. Maybe this is why Utermohlen painted himself as having lost his face.

So, the difficult question is where the changes lie and whether I will be able to show them at all. It is probably the eyes which most people would judge at a first encounter, because they appear to be the most direct point of communication between two human beings. In the Alzheimer patients portrayed by Alex Ten Napel the eyes are not dull, they appear sparkling with life, and even more so than in a healthy person. This I found surprising, but the observation was supported by work done by Seidl et al. in 2012 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22495337), who found that a decline in cognitive abilities was associated with increased facial expressiveness. This means that in order to put signs of the disease into Einstein’s face, I will need to experiment with exaggerating facial communication, not just his eyes. It will however not mean an exaggeration in the way a portrait caricaturist would do, but to also make the expression inappropriate, including e.g. bewilderment or anxiety (http://alzheimers.about.com/od/diagnosisissues/a/Visual_clues.htm). I thus started a small collection of photos of Einstein’s face in different emotional states.
In order to be able to capture the essential elements of change I think that I will need a very naturalistic approach to the portrait and find a way of guiding the spectator to the facial changes. To this end I had a look at artists making highly expressive portraits. Since I love ink pen drawings and have already experimented with “scribble drawings”, and my tutor encouraged me to expand on the continuous line exercise earlier this year, I was happy to find the scribbling portraits made by Vince Low (http://www.incrediblesnaps.com/scribbled-drawings-by-vince-low), but not so happy to find on that page the inevitable Einstein sticking his tongue out. I know that Einstein loved life, but I dislike the business associated with reducing him to crazy professor status. Some of the portraits, however (keep scrolling down!), appear to me to be very strong. The other artist I want to derive inspiration from is Käthe Kollwitz, especially her self-portraits (http://www.spaightwoodgalleries.com/Pages/Kollwitz_self_portraits.html). Looking forward to experimenting!