3-29-24 100 portraits
I have been working on 100 portraits, an Ig challenge to draw 100 people in a week. I have drawn about 70 images. As I progress in this project, I am taking more care in selecting subjects, finding references, and in creating more detailed portraits. Still, they are pretty simple, and I am not looking for a high degree of likeness. That is challenging when the portrait is of someone I know (me or F), as I want to be true to the likeness as I comprehend it. Each photo that I use for reference gives a different persona. Even if they have the same name, they are not the same person. The time the photo was taken may also vary, so age comes into the representation. I have been trying to draw some images of myself with the wrinkles on my face. It is easy to exaggerate the lines, especially with the pen. The wrinkle lines take on as much importance as the structural lines. Minute changes in contrast and proportion create a different character.
As I said, drawing each portrait takes longer as I progress in the project. At first, I invented the faces, and they were quick sketches. I did about twelve the first day. Then, I started using reference photos, but I used only lines, no value. That also went quickly, and I produced about an equal number to the invented portraits. But now the pace has slowed to between 3 and 6 images a day, and I am getting tired.
This is an experiment in the nature of the extended project. It will still be a fairly quick study, even with 100 images. In accumulating images, I see the transition from invented and simple to more studied and complex. Will the viewers pick up on this, too? I know F has, as he commented, that I should go back to the earlier ones and add more value range to make the project more consistent, but I am interested in seeing what happens as I continue. How will the approach to the portraits shift? Will I eventually go back to invented images? Or will they become more stylized? (I have noticed a difference between the images I have drawn from photographs and the ones that were artist’s self-portraits, largely paintings.)
I am indebted to other artists for their images. Some come from magazine images I collected while teaching figure drawing. Some are from books of photographic portraits and artists' self-portraits. I have also looked at paintings and art history references. I refer to the images without copying them in composition. I change the cropping. And the use of ink radically alters the style of the images. Most images deviate from the details and likeness of the portrait. Still I recognize that I wouldn’t be able to do this project with the timeline of a week’s work if I had to create all the references myself. (I’m into week two and probably will need another week to finish.) I don’t think this project is commercially intended or viable, and I see it as an exercise, but it may turn into something else: a statement about humanity. Anyway, I hope all involved will see this as the collaboration it is and know that I appreciate their input. (I am giving myself a lot of credit that anyone will ever see this in the presentation stage.)
I have found old photos of myself and Fernando, where we are babes in our 40s and 50s. So lovely to see our younger selves and to enter back into the mindset that we had. But I also realize that those people and the lives they were living, the activities they engaged in are gone forever. A photo is not the real thing. I cannot reinhabit these people's minds, bodies, or circumstances. They are gone. I am now something else. Continuity? Of course, I can’t deny that, but it is psychological, and there is no living past or future, only the continually changing present. These images strongly show me that. And I recognize that representation is a fixed position we rely on to symbolize our being. But the Being cannot be captured or fixed. And it cannot be comprehended with wholeness, with the truth of what it is. Interpretation and knowledge are always limited.
F said that I am doing this project because I feel isolated from people. Is that correct? It is compelling to look into a face and find the emotion and to be free to look as long as I want to. Staring in real-time and with real people is not appreciated; it is seen as an intrusion. Looking too long makes people nervous. It is true that I feel isolated and that I do like to look at people. But I would also really like to have an intimate conversation, to go beyond the superficial greetings that are mostly what we have these days.
What do these images say, and do they speak together collectively? What impression does seeing 100 faces together create?
Comments