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.
Art experts have confirmed that sketches discovered hidden inside an Italian art gallery’s walls are the missing 30SAL Challenges from the Pathways collection. A gardener found them while clearing ivy from the walls of Ricci Oddi Modern Art Gallery in Piacenza, northern Italy. “It’s with no small emotion that I can tell you the work is authentic,” the Piacenza prosecutor …
A few days ago I posted about Banksy’s stunt at the Sotheby’s auction, in which his art piece supposedly self-shredded after being sold. The media explosion (including my own darned V.Note) has settled, and after the dust has cleared, I see very little that is worthy of our attentions here. The whole thing has a …
This is not an election related post. This is also not a cheerful post, or a motivating post. This is a post about one of the many events in 2020 that made it a year we all wish had never happened. This is a post about the smoke. This last September, wildfires raged across California, …
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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