Part 4, project 6, exercise 3 – portrait

Task: a portrait from memory or imagination. Not so long ago I would have looked at this with joy and relief. Now, after struggling to make sense of what I see in front of me and realising the advantages that confers in terms of perspectives and all those unevennesses faces have, I’m glaring at the instruction with an expression somewhere between disbelief and horror. Someone I saw in passing? A person I used to know? A character from a book? Strange how that wipes every conceivable memory and drops my imagination through a trapdoor so that I can’t even remember … Continue reading Part 4, project 6, exercise 3 – portrait

Part 4, project 6 – research point #2

Historic and contemporary self portraits. I chose Rembrandt and van Gogh as my historic examples (then read that they were recommended) because of their very different approaches. I particularly liked Rembrandt’s honesty with regard to his image when he was older; the unvarnished truth of it and the lack of glamour. His style is very much about realism, these were the instagrams of the day, the selfies, and many of his clients paying for commissions were likely to require a very positive image of themselves and their surroundings. Van Gogh, an insular man with some enormous troubles, painted fractured images … Continue reading Part 4, project 6 – research point #2

Part 4, project 6 – research point #1

Contemporary and historic artists working in different ways on the head. See in particular Graham Little and Elizabeth Peyton. Extraordinarily, Little has no Wikipedia entry and doesn’t appear in any of the books I have to hand. An internet search brings up gallery reports, blogs, and news items, with The Guardian in 2010 introducing his Artist of the Week slot thus: The women in Graham Little’s virtuoso drawings inhabit a world of sumptuous beauty. Realised in a muted Merchant Ivory palette, these long-limbed belles recline gracefully in designer interiors. This is an 80s world of midnight-blue suits and earth-coloured bed sheets, of … Continue reading Part 4, project 6 – research point #1