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That Which We Cannot See
I recently painted a self portrait for my wife’s birthday. While considering the composition and clumsily trying to set up a pair of mirrors in my studio, it occurred to me that I am more than a little unfamiliar with the back of my head. I adjusted the mirrors so that I would have a view from directly behind. I found that I have an interesting head. Who’d have guessed?
I have a 55 year old’s lived-in face, I would describe my looks as unusual. I lost my hair as a young man and grew a beard as compensation in my mid twenties. I’ve broken my nose twice and my cheekbone once which has skewed my features somewhat. In addition I have a large pair of ears which stick out determinedly to ruin my otherwise streamlined appearance (it does allow me excellent hearing, however).
My eyes are deep set, and an odd colour too. My wife says they change with the weather from green to blue to grey. I catch a flash of mustard in them sometimes, in the right light.
I should explain, I am a serial portraitist, this wasn’t a one off whim. I trained as an artist, illustrator and designer in the early eighties and have been drawing (mostly nudes) ever since. A few years ago I decided to try my hand at portraiture in oils and, after several attempts at guinea pig friends and a couple of courses with an established artist, I feel like I might be starting to get somewhere.
Everyone is familiar with their own reflection and the way they look in photographs, but the weird thing about making a self portrait is the level of objectivity you have to apply to make a reasonable likeness. You have to ignore the familiarity.
Every facet of colour and form that in combination make up the structure of a face must be analytically observed in comparison to their nearest neighbour. You compare the length of your nose to the width of your eyes, the height of your forehead to the depth of your chin, and so on. You end up feeling like you are looking at someone (or something) who/which is not you. It’s quite unsettling.
The height of most faces can be roughly divided into thirds. The top third for the forehead, the next third down to below the nose and the last third from there down to under the chin. The widths of all the features vary on the canvas depending on the angle of view. Eyes, noses…
