Multitudes #2: Personalities
Doodling in Public
To learn to draw faces, I start with drawing shapes of heads across a page. Then for each, I add features, usually starting with the eyes. My initial idea was to try to draw faces with each with a different emotion. However, very quickly, I lost control. Or rather, because I don’t have a clear idea of how to produce a particular facial expression, the noses, eyes and mouths began forming their own expressions. The faces emerged with their own distinct personalities and expressions. If I had more control or skill I could make the faces conform to the expression I had in mind. But I found it much more interesting to see how slight changes in the shape of the eyes, the tilt of eyebrows, the particular configuration of the mouth, create expressions I couldn’t have deliberately produced. In art, what emerges unplanned, is usually more interesting to me than my intentions.
