Poor Art Student Grotto: Experiment

This week an assignment was due in figure drawing class. I had to draw four different faces of either different races or ages or both. As usual, I procrastinated until the week of. So, I didn't start until Tuesday with the due date being that Thursday. So, this is a kind of journal of two of those experiences.

Tuesday. Cooper.
This is Cooper. He's a senior communications major, and a very, very funny and smart guy with a heavy dose of the dramatic. I saw him earlier in the day and asked if I could sketch him, he agreed and I tried to draw him, but when I tried to capture his likeness, it never looked like him. I tried several times, but it was a no-go. The problem was in the structure. Instead of constructing a frame and hanging or attaching the features to it, I was heading straight for the details and glancing over their supports. As a result, the drawings had this fluid quality that more closely resembled over-easy eggs than what a face really is: a knot of protruding and flat bones with muscles stretched and tied at points, covered with deposits of fat and then, on top of all this, a thin layer of stretched skin. Really, the skin’s just an extra; a minor part in view of the whole body.

So, now that I saw this and thanks to curse of being an anal retentive, control-freak, I had to begin it again. Both of us were very busy that day, and so the only time that worked was a little before midnight. Well, as you can see, he fell asleep. Which is fine, the problem though was that I didn't realize how much he had moved his face! I just kept plopping in the placement of features, working out details, unaware that they were no longer where I thought they were! As a result, his right eye looks forward (as he was in the beginning of the pose), and his left eye is placed in a way to indicate a turn of a head (which he had done, drifting off in Na-Na land).

It would have been fantastic to just erase the line I placed in for that eye and start over, bu,t because of the medium, it would have looked pretty bad. Also, it was late, I was tired, he was tired, his roomates were tired, we were all tired and so I decided: I'll look at it in the morning. Wednesday. Grandma Norma.(Uh, some more things happened…and I didn't get to Cooper on this day.)

Thursday. 10am. The due date.
Thank God for roommates that don’t mind being stared at! I know I feel weird drawing them, so I can’t imagine what their thinking. Although it’s probably something like, “why, why, why, why…” or the more worried “oh-hope he doesn’t notice my forehead-I know its big but I hope he doesn’t he doesn’t see it-oh I want to see if he did- maybe if I glance over while he looking down he won’t notice-okay he down. Ah crap! its huge!-why did he do that?! No, no its okay. Its o-kay now breath breath, breath--”. At least that’s what I imagine.

So, I finish my roommate’s portrait look again at Cooper’s portrait from the night before. That left eye of his!! Something needs to be done. Mike, my other roommate said it looked like he had a black eye. At the time, I was a little offended, but now I thought, why should I be offended? He’s friggin right! If you’re going to do something, you might as well go all the way. Don’t just float around the idea of a black-eye, alluding to it like a loose hand trying to point. No! Take your hand, make a fist, pull back and give Cooper one big punch in face! So, that’s what I did. Well, not literally…I took a googled image of a black-eye and made Cooper’s look, as best I could, as a black-eye. So, there it is. SMACK!

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**Okay, I have spent way, way too much time on it. Some good ideas have come from it though. The possibility of pairing a portrait or any piece with written text, not as something that merely explains, but as a total experience. The text gives you the con-text for a reading of the visual. Ack! I love that idea and it pairs the verbal/written with the purely visual! It has just been amazing to me lately how much the art forms are related. Could someone please write a book on this or are there books on this and I have just been too dense to notice them?

By the way, I really like this way of organizing. Limiting myself to one topic or instance helps me better flesh out what I'm trying to say. If I have too much to focus on, I get lost, confused and in desperate need of my blankie.

Also, another brain fart, I've noticed that inserting little comedic jabs like “blankie” or "brain fart" helps guide my thinking. It’s like it reminds me not sound so high and mighty. I am after all a human being that farts, poops and pisses in pretty much the same way as everyone else. See! See that! The way I chose to express this idea was by using it. For me, it just makes sense for some reason (maybe a reminder of humility-our meaness in light of God. Human beings signing to each other.) or another, this just seems like the right thing to do for both me and for you. I wonder if it’s possible to be really effective without them?

Alright, I'm going to shut up now. Here's the pictures.

(CLICK ANY TO ENLARGE)