Real life drawing? Like...from life?

 

Some recent drawings...from actual life! Yes, real life. Eat hot sh*t COVID. Lots of it.

January Red Paper Pastel

 

Keeping warm by the fire in color. A recent pastel on red paper—working within the figure style from previous work done last summer. 

Unposted Work

 Posted below is a collection of work from life and reference that I've never posted, or that I felt didn't work in Instagram's format limitations. So I took it down and changed it or removed it altogether. It's mostly from the last year or so—before the lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic—when life drawing workshops were still functioning in my region of the world and I was very much committed to making a transition off of newsprint; due to its non-archival qualities. 

 

Lea (from reference)

Long pose of Jennifer (from life)

Jennifer (from reference)

Larva (25 min. pose from life with some additional work)

Maude (15 min. from life)

Taryn (from reference)

Jennifer (from reference)

The Library Of Emotions—YouTube Channel

I recently stumbled upon a video project posted to YouTube by the channel The Library Of Emotions, and It made me think a lot about my last post and the modern trend of omitting faces of strangers in design and art.

Many of the videos posted to the channel are simple long shots of strangers just staring into the camera with a thematic phrase used to tie them together. Along with some beautiful and subdued background music created by the filmmaker behind the series—Yuliku. Even after just watching a few short minutes—it's difficult not to feel some type of emotional connection with the people being filmed. Sometimes powerfully so. It makes me wonder—if people who despise one another were just forced to sit down and look into the eyes of the "other" in silence for prolonged periods—the world might be a better place. However meagerly so. And if there is one important lesson drawing and painting from life has taught me, it's just how profound an experience this can truly be. To stare and deeply see someone—you don't even really know oftentimes—for hours on end.

The faceless

 

This is a daily figure exercise from a few months ago and I'm posting it here as a means to explore something I've found to be a bit puzzling about our time. 

Although it's difficult to tease out what is genuinely authentic on social media sometimes—I've noticed a common trend or theme among much of the modern figure work I've encountered; the public doesn't really care to see the faces of people they don't know. At all. Especially if they are attached to a figure. And this is something I've increasingly become aware of when posting drawings or paintings of my own work to social media.

Maybe it's always been this way to some extent or another and I've just never noticed it. But, I look at the work of accomplished contemporary American artists like Zhaoming Wu or Steve Huston, and nearly all of their work that includes a figure or body discludes the face of the subject. Or in the least, their identity as a person is mostly obscured. And this trend goes beyond just the work of contemporary American artists. It extends to mannequins as well and to items as obscure as faceless angel figurines on Amazon.

Artist: Zhaoming Wu

Artist: Steve Houston

Faceless Mannequins 

A Faceless Angel Figurine

In all the history of art and western culture I don't think there is a period prior to the last 30 or so years where this was a cultural trend in design and art. And I have yet to encounter any kind of cultural historian who has articulated this—or confronted as to why this has happened. 

As an artist, who has spent a lifetime working to understand and communicate the intricacies and nuances of expression transmitted by the human face—I've found this to be incredibly strange. Christ, there is an entire area in the brain purely dedicated to perceiving faces; the fusiform gyrus. And there's really not that many famous or beloved figurative works prior to the late 20th century where the figure's identity is unimportant or deliberately obscured. 

How is it now that we don't want to look at the face of humanity? Especially when it comes to strangers or unfamiliar faces. If one looks at art work in popular culture prior to the 80s, especially in commercial illustration, it is filled to the brim with human faces of all types. And Norman Rockwell is a perfect example of this. It's nearly all quirky, idiosyncratic, everyday strangers—the common man/woman. 

 

The Right To Know Norman Rockwell, 1968

Although I can't claim to wield the intellectual tool set or resources to confront this question in depth; I most definitely think something has happened on a deep cultural level in the last 30-40 years that has been traumatic in ways we see one another (strangers in particular) and it's gone on mostly unrecognized by the wider culture. Especially in America. 

Pastel returns...again

⁣⁣These are some recent experiments with color and pastel. There is something incredibly arresting and radiant about pastel—it's brilliance. And in a season that seems so incredibly dark at times; a little color and brilliance feels like an unarticulated necessity.⁣⁣

Daily Figure 6-1-2020

Started using Cretacolor's XL Nero Art Sticks here for light values and halftones in place of the Prismacolor Art Stix. They're less waxy. And wider. Much wider. So they cover a lot more ground in less time while still allowing for sensitive restraint in building-up values. Which suits them well for life drawing—where time and control are at a premium due to the fatigue factor forever taxing the model.