Zoom has me staring at my face all day. I try not to look, but there I am. Somewhere in the settings I clicked the mirror image option, so now what I see is different from the view I have seen all my life. My face is backwards. It’s disconcerting. Looking at myself this way, I see things about my face I’ve never noticed before, like how crooked my nose is, and how one tooth isn’t in line with the rest. No wonder I didn’t see it before, because one eye is always half closed – that must be my artist eye, squinting to see values. Or maybe I’m just tired.
Lucian Freud, Self Portrait
Alice Neel learned from her teacher that everyone has a dominant eye. She took the idea and ran with it. She painted her subjects with one dominant hand, one weak one. I was remarking about this in a class, laughing at how odd it is that we have two identical hands but only one works. A student who also teaches dance said everyone’s body is asymmetrical for balance and strength. One side is better at strength, the other at balance and dexterity. It was about that moment that I imagined us all as crabs. I realized it wasn’t an accident that our “non-dominant” hands aren’t as dexterous as our “dominant” hands, they’re just built to have different skills. I am sorry I have not (knowingly) been exercising mine to achieve its full potential.
Alice Neel, Portrait showing one weak and one dominant hand
A typical portraits class has us all measuring ideal proportions. The head is five eye lengths wide. The eyes are halfway down the head. The corners of the mouth are directly below each iris. Knowing the proportions of the face help us avoid making the typical mistakes of shortening the forehead and widening the eyes, but they don’t really help us express the personality in a face. Our faces aren’t symmetrical. Even if they were, we only see one piece at a time. Why do we try to pretend we don’t? In Expressive Portraits class, I had everyone focus on asymmetry for an evening of sketches.
David Hockney, Portrait of Mother III, 1985
We looked at portraits by Alice Neel, Lucian Freud, and David Hockney for inspiration, and then we began a series of sketches. At first it was difficult for me to not fix things, not to remeasure and align. It took effort to assert and emphasize the differences, but every time we did it made a more interesting drawing, and more fun all round.
Drawings by Shima Bhamra, Liz Hejlsberg, Katie Jo Keppinger, Anne Walker, Alex Walker, and Ruthie V.
Portraits from Sktchy app, featuring faces posted by Lorraine Weberg, Aeb Art, and Cody Kay. Special guest star: Stephen Fry.
Posts have continued to pop up for our 30 Day January Creative Challenge. New people have joined in! Instagram continues to stand out as the social media of choice for most artists – we now have over 1000 posts! Some people are new to social media, some are new to drawing. Everyone is posting stuff …
I have been sharing some of Carlos San Millan’s favorite painters, and we are nearly to the end of his list. So far I’ve posted Kim Frohsin, Mitchell Johnson, Yann Kebbi, Марина Цветаева (Marina Tsvetyeva), Sangram Majumdar, and Bato Dugarzhapov. Today is an artist who has distilled her painting all the way to the surface of the canvas. When done well, …
Today’s TRANSCRIPTION Challenge: Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass. Media is artist’s choice. In recent V. Notes I talked about how artists learn and get inspired by studying works by other artists. In art, to transcribe is to copy or record information in a different form than the original. To transcribe a painting or drawing is not …
One of the best and most influential comic book artists of all time, Jean Giraud was born in Paris France in 1938, and drew under the pen name Moebius, after the German mathematician who created the Moebius strip. The French artist was famous in America for illustrating series such as the Silver Surfer parables published …
Asymmetrical Faces
Zoom has me staring at my face all day. I try not to look, but there I am. Somewhere in the settings I clicked the mirror image option, so now what I see is different from the view I have seen all my life. My face is backwards. It’s disconcerting. Looking at myself this way, I see things about my face I’ve never noticed before, like how crooked my nose is, and how one tooth isn’t in line with the rest. No wonder I didn’t see it before, because one eye is always half closed – that must be my artist eye, squinting to see values. Or maybe I’m just tired.
Alice Neel learned from her teacher that everyone has a dominant eye. She took the idea and ran with it. She painted her subjects with one dominant hand, one weak one. I was remarking about this in a class, laughing at how odd it is that we have two identical hands but only one works. A student who also teaches dance said everyone’s body is asymmetrical for balance and strength. One side is better at strength, the other at balance and dexterity. It was about that moment that I imagined us all as crabs. I realized it wasn’t an accident that our “non-dominant” hands aren’t as dexterous as our “dominant” hands, they’re just built to have different skills. I am sorry I have not (knowingly) been exercising mine to achieve its full potential.
A typical portraits class has us all measuring ideal proportions. The head is five eye lengths wide. The eyes are halfway down the head. The corners of the mouth are directly below each iris. Knowing the proportions of the face help us avoid making the typical mistakes of shortening the forehead and widening the eyes, but they don’t really help us express the personality in a face. Our faces aren’t symmetrical. Even if they were, we only see one piece at a time. Why do we try to pretend we don’t? In Expressive Portraits class, I had everyone focus on asymmetry for an evening of sketches.
We looked at portraits by Alice Neel, Lucian Freud, and David Hockney for inspiration, and then we began a series of sketches. At first it was difficult for me to not fix things, not to remeasure and align. It took effort to assert and emphasize the differences, but every time we did it made a more interesting drawing, and more fun all round.
Drawings by Shima Bhamra, Liz Hejlsberg, Katie Jo Keppinger, Anne Walker, Alex Walker, and Ruthie V.
Portraits from Sktchy app, featuring faces posted by Lorraine Weberg, Aeb Art, and Cody Kay. Special guest star: Stephen Fry.
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I have been sharing some of Carlos San Millan’s favorite painters, and we are nearly to the end of his list. So far I’ve posted Kim Frohsin, Mitchell Johnson, Yann Kebbi, Марина Цветаева (Marina Tsvetyeva), Sangram Majumdar, and Bato Dugarzhapov. Today is an artist who has distilled her painting all the way to the surface of the canvas. When done well, …
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Today’s TRANSCRIPTION Challenge: Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass. Media is artist’s choice. In recent V. Notes I talked about how artists learn and get inspired by studying works by other artists. In art, to transcribe is to copy or record information in a different form than the original. To transcribe a painting or drawing is not …
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One of the best and most influential comic book artists of all time, Jean Giraud was born in Paris France in 1938, and drew under the pen name Moebius, after the German mathematician who created the Moebius strip. The French artist was famous in America for illustrating series such as the Silver Surfer parables published …