Drawing 1; Part 4; Project 6 – The head; Exercise 3 – Portrait from memory or imagination

I had half an hour at an art group session after finishing something else, and started to sketch a face using a 5B pencil. I had no intention of it being anyone in particular – however, I had recently tried a self-portrait (see first effort in Exercise 2) so a slightly off-centre pose was in my mind, and I concentrated on trying to get features in the correct places (e.g. eyes not too close together, which is a bit of a failing of mine) and bone structure correct (including a decent sized neck). I kept the hairstyle and earrings I had drawn onto the self-portrait, still not intending the drawing to be me, but just because I had drawn them recently so had an idea of how they went (or at least, I wanted to see if I could remember how they went).

I am quite pleased with the result, in that it was fairly well proportioned (apart from the nearer eye being too big), I had avoided most of the traps fallen into previously, I had introduced a feeling of solidity through the use of tone and had produced a drawing which I thought could definitely be “somebody”. The comments of passing art group members however were interesting – a couple looked around at other members facing me round the table to try and work out which one of them I was drawing, and were a bit mystified when it wasn’t any of them – someone said “she knows all her facial proportions” – nobody suggested it looked anything like me or even that it reminded them of anyone else. 

So have I drawn a portrait, or a head?

I think I’ve drawn a head. When I tried a self-portrait, even the one with the cross eyes and chicken neck, I think there was a sense of a person “present”, even if less perfectly conveyed – although I’m not sure why – the slightly anxious look in the eyes, maybe? My imagined ideal has no particular expression. I think, to me, that any portrait I made of a real person, whether it was myself or someone else, would conjure up to me the experience of painting and any relationship (close or transient) with the sitter, and I hope I would put something in it which I had closely observed to convey a fleeting glimpse of that person to the viewer.