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.