Inktober 2018 Day 18

Definitely Not As Cute As The Monkey On My Back:

We tend to think of other people’s heads as representing the whole person. And we tend to think of the essential part of ourselves as resident inside our own heads.

But there is evidence that emotion, and even thought, requires the rest of the body, at least as feedback loop, if not actual origin.

I’ve done a lot of work about the head vs the body in sculpture and drawing over the years without making any identifiable progress on the topic.  

And I’m afraid the proximate source of this drawing was the recent cover of National Geographic- “See The Bond of Monkeys and Humans in the Amazon” which featured a winsome monkey sitting on the head of a winsome child. 

Neither iteration of me is winsome. But while thinking about what could sit on my head, I did give some serious consideration to rodents...so while I am less cute than a monkey....maybe I am more cute than a rat?...

But actually, no. Can’t make that claim.

Inktober 2018 Day 17

Not My Most Authentic Self:

Tooth enamel is the hardest biological substance known, and lasts longer than the other parts of the skull. Given my dental challenges, I am not confident about the longevity of the rest of me.

While never a skilled smiler, I had exemplary teeth until the age of 35. I was a dental hygiene zealot during childhood and didn’t have a single cavity until pregnant with our first child. But things started to fall apart then, and have continued to decline ever since. 

I sculpted a partial mask with big grinning teeth to wear in a cibachrome photograph many years ago. At that point, I was mostly interested in the social ramifications of a big fake smile.  

But now that my actual smile is no longer entirely natural, I have a slightly different perspective on what the wearing of fake teeth might mean.

Inktober 2018 Day 16

Even More Difficult And Uncomfortable Than It Looks:

Thinking about heads, portraiture and distortion always brings the work of Franz Xavier Messerschmidt to my mind. He was initially a rather traditionally inclined Austrian sculptor in  the mid to late 1700’s. 

Near the end of his life, however, Messerschmidt produced a large series of peculiar “character heads” of men who faces were contorted in bizarre expressions. Facts are a bit inconclusive, but there is some evidence that these heads were not just exercises in idiosyncratic exaggeration, but were in fact driven by paranoia and hallucinations. He supposedly created the expressions by pinching himself under his ribs, and the heads somehow gained him protection from various spirits and “the god of proportion,” who tortured him at night.

These Messerschmidt busts are reproduced so frequently now that they almost seem commonplace...but while thinking about facial expression recently, I tried mimicking some of the expressions on my own face. 

I had very little success. After a few minutes, I had a headache, and felt in danger of breaking a blood vessel somewhere. Perhaps my facial muscles need more exercise...certainly more decorative symmetry....but I don’t think that is something I can acquire.

But I did not try pinching myself under my ribs, or anywhere else, and the God of Proportion has always left me alone.

Inktober 2018 Day 15

Regarding The Interior Critic;

I am always a little ambivalent about anatomical information. Sometimes the incomplete knowledge (it’s always incomplete unless one is an anatomy master, and there are very few of those) is more of a distraction and an impediment to careful observation.  

I did study anatomy pretty attentively during college on my own and in an ecorché class at the New York Academy of Art. Sadly, I think I might have managed to forget most of it.

But...I do clearly remember an undergraduate class with the venerable Bernard Chaet. He was not a practitioner of anatomy as an end in itself, but he assigned projects where we had to draw skeletons into famous works of art. And he had us repeatedly draw self portraits.  These he would mercilessly correct in class, looking each student in the face while commenting on both our failures in drawing skill and physical attractiveness: For example: “you’re clearly misunderstood how to use perspective to render your face in a three quarter view...and your nose has a much larger lump on the end than you have drawn.”

I fear that Bernard Chaet would not be impressed with my Inktober Day 15 offering.

But he does continue to influence my drawing and sculpting still despite the passage of many years and his passing in 2012.

So perhaps this is a momento mori subway selfie? 

That sounds pretty pretentious doesn’t it? I was really just trying to see if I could stuff a skull into my head on short notice. The answer was only sort of.

Inktober 2018 Day 14

Insulting To Dogs:

The human head is distinctive in many ways, but particularly in its lack of a protruding muzzle, and its odd, protruding chin.  

Some evolutionary biologists theorize that since human teeth were no longer essential weapons, the mouth was allowed to sink back into the face and decrease in size. But the human chin is apparently a difficult-to-explain oddity. I read that even our close relatives the Neanderthals didn’t have chins like we do.

Evolutionary adaptations aside, I sometimes do wonder if at least one of my kids would fare better just hanging out with a dog than with his micromanaging, health-promoting mother. 

But clearly, mother/dog hybrids won’t help.

My son told me this drawing was an insult to myself...and, perhaps more notably, an insult to dogs.

Inktober 2018 Day 13

Is It What’s Inside That Counts?

I often find myself telling sculpture students that when they are working on a mouth, they need to think about the surfaces wrapping around from the outside to the inside...rather than just drawing a line.  

I do repeat myself a lot, both in class and everywhere else.

But the human inside- ie the mouth and the digestive tract- is in fact basically outside. We are essentially walking tubes that support a whole system of microorganisms. 

(A little off the topic of heads and their distortions, I know.)

But to finish the thought...my tube of microorganisms spends a huge amount of time on the subway, usually accompanied by the bacteria and viral transfer mechanisms otherwise  known as children. 

So I figure the majority of my interior tube has probably been colonized by microorganisms from the New York City Subway tubes.

Inktober 2018 Day 12

Is That An Angry Mob Coming Our Way?

Most contemporary people are not magical thinkers who believe that an effigy of a person is invested with that person’s actual presence or power....

But worldwide, people still go to some trouble to topple, deface, or destroy images of folks whose authority they don’t appreciate. 

(Though on some occasions, apparently the US marines are there to stir things up for a photo op)

Decapitating the authority figure is cathartic and empowering, no doubt. 

If only my kids could install a lawfully elected democratic government to run things after deposing their leaders. 

Less bickering that way.

Inktober 2018 Day 11

It May Not Be An Effective Deterrent:

Back in the late 80’s I read a New York Times article on how people who worked in a forest preserve in the Sundarbans avoided tiger attacks by wearing human face masks on the back of their heads. Presumably, the tigers were thus convinced that it was impossible to sneak up on them.

I liked this story so much that I have repeated it on several occasions over the last two decades. This time, however, I thought maybe I should check to see if I had it right.  I did find the original article. But based on my cursory google research, it seems that the masks’ effectiveness has waned. The tigers have wised up. 

A rear facing mask probably wouldn’t work in my house either. 

Inktober 2018 Day 10

I Might Have Brought This On Myself:

Family resemblance can be screamingly obvious to the unrelated. In the abstract, I know that our kids look like me, but I find it easier to see their resemblance to their father. And it is even easier for me to spot the same mouth and earlobes on a stranger and her son sitting across from me on a subway train.

But oddly enough, it seems that everyone unconsciously looks at others through the filter of their family.  I’ve noticed when teaching drawing and portraiture in sculpture that at some level all artists seem inclined to draw or sculpt themselves.  My hypothesis is that it’s not so much that everyone is familiar with the shape of their own head, but that perhaps they are familiar with the shape of the heads they looked at early and often while growing up.

There is clinical evidence that our brains need to be trained to see a particular sort of face in the same way that they are trained to speak a particular language. Infants arrive in the world ready to learn any language and recognize any kind of face, (including animals) but specialize in the kind that they live with and lose the skills for the others.

We each look at the world through our own particular filter, but it’s so baked in that it is hard to see it. 

This drawing ended up more disturbing than anticipated. My apologies to our sons.

Inktober 2018 Day 9

We All Know What This Feels Like:

Our brain does a lot of unconscious processing of faces.  We like to see them as intact and symmetrical even when that is not what the raw data would indicate. 

There are a good many apps now available that will morph and distort faces for you. 

Of course, I had to try to draw a face that came by its distortion through multiple viewpoints compressed into one, kind of, intact head. 

It might be a more realistic representation of how I feel this evening than what I actually look like...though I am not an impartial judge.

Inkober 2018 Day 2

Maybe I Just Like It This Way:

As I already pedantically mentioned, for at least a couple of  reasons, lately I’ve been thinking a lot about portraiture, heads and faces. 

At any rate, there was a whole lot of tangential research on many topics ranging from the neurobiology of face processing to the cultural implications of emerging facial recognition software to the world history of non-fine art appearances of the human head- vents, puppets, death masks, shrunken heads...etc, etc, etc.

So it’s going to be “Headtober” I guess... 

And probably just my own effigy, since I can’t in good conscience abuse other people...(except maybe my kids...)

This image is based on the clinical observation that people actually can recognize upside down faces better if the eyes are reversed to right side up. If you doubt the creepiness of this situation, look at the image upside down.

Our brains also have a lot of trouble recognizing faces in unusual light situations- i.e. lighting from below is very troubling. Also creepy.

There is evidence that human brains  mostly like to recognize faces by their overall patterns of light and dark...though maybe once a face is upside down and the pattern is unfamiliar, it helps to have the eyes be out of pattern. 

I’m not a neuroscientist, I just like to read about them, and then prattle on endlessly to folks in my class about it.

Inktober 2018 Day 5

My Own Sidekick

(Self-Ventriloquism)

The creepiness of vents is possibly only matched by the creepiness of some ventriloquists.

While preparing for a class in portrait sculpture this fall, I found myself thinking a bit about those puppets that we are not supposed to call “dummies”.....why are they so creepy? and why do I think they have something to say about representing the human head and portrait sculpture? 

Maybe part of the issue is the human brain’s proclivity to project life and intention on inanimate objects? Puppets often come off as more lively than their masters. The vent is usually the one with the boundary-pushing funny lines, while the “real person” is the boring straight man

(If this topic interests you at all, google Nina Conti and/or the movie “Her Master’s Voice” for some meta-ventriloquism material.)

I’ve made a lot of real world sculptural effigies of myself, but never a puppet with a hinged jaw. 

Perhaps just as well, I would be too easily upstaged. 

Inktober 2018 Day 6

It Has Become Difficult to Sleep Through the Night :

Yes, it is only the 6th day of October, and I am already falling behind on the posts.

I have some drivel to add to this one, but it is too late tonight, so I will just leave to assume I have some interesting thoughts ...about this image...or about anything...

Inktober 2018 Day 8

The Cure for Impostor Syndrome

Why is a mask so much more disturbing when you can see the person underneath? Often, masks reveal the wearer’s eyes. I thought perhaps revealed teeth might be a nice addition. 

My kids and spouse agreed that this drawing is more upsetting than the ones that came before it. 

Maybe that is an accomplishment?

Speaking of accomplishment, or the lack thereof, I definitely have had my share of impostor syndrome....particularly when teaching...(or even parenting...when are those real parents going to show up?)

But one just has to put on the mask and pretend to be the real deal.

Inktober 2018 Day 7

Problems With Depth Perception:

Human eyes are pretty distinctive because of the amount of sclera (white) in relation to iris and pupil. Evolutionary biologists have theorized that the large white is there to help us see one another’s gaze and read all of the important social information contained within it. 

As my younger son helpfully pointed out, the multiple eye meme is way played out. Many people have painted additional eyes on their faces, or just photoshopped on an extra set or two. 

But pedant that I am, I have to point out that most of these multiple eye iterations don’t consider where all those eyes are gazing.  

If you had multiple eyes, would you use them all to look at one thing, or to send one message?

Fun fact: I pretty much have monocular vision. Both of my two eyes work, but my brain only talks to one of them regularly. When I was a child, the unused eye used to wander, and had to be taught to follow the other one. 

While I was a child, I could never figure out why it was so important to my parents that I keep the recessive eye following the dominant one. Of course, later I was grateful that they insisted, as wandering eyes can be....distracting.

While studying sculpture in college, I had a lot of anxiety about my monocular vision. Could I really make three dimensional work if I couldn’t actually see three dimensions? 

I hope the answer is yes.

But if I had eight eyes, who knows?

Inktober 2018 Day 4

Solutions To Problems I Didn’t Even Know I Had:

It seems that our ability to recognize faces is mostly based on overall patterns and not the particular facial features. But most verbal descriptions (and police sketch artists) rely on the type of features because it’s pretty hard to verbalize the pattern rather than, say, “she has a big nose.” 

I read that there are face feature kits, so one can assemble the face of a criminal from various parts.  But I also read that the success rate with such kits is low. (Eigenfaces work better...but maybe more on those later in the month)

But clearly, as far as self portraits go, all it takes is a bit of feature displacement for the whole thing to go off the rails. 

(My kind spouse recently got a new printer - with all the ink cartridges! So I was able to print out a large unflattering (so say I) photo of my face)

Inktober 2018 Day 3

At Least I Have A Boyfriend:

Researchers report that human brains are incredibly good at discerning whether a face is male or female in a split second, though it is hard to articulate how.

Like previous studies of difference between races, I suspect that these results have something to do with the underlying assumptions behind the research. 

This image was inspired by the thankfully bygone meme of “underbeard selfies,” and how unfamiliar head parts become when viewed from an odd angle.

But my younger son referred to this drawing as “your self portrait with a cat on your head” so perhaps I was not very successful.

Scary cat though.

Inktober 2018

Not a Napkin:

Inktober 2018 Day1 I am afraid.

We lost a good many followers during previous Inktobers when I drew weird things that were not recognizable characters or fan art.

My apologies, once again.

I do see inktober as an opportunity to make myself draw some things in ink, not on napkins, at the somewhat uncomfortable pace of one per day.

I’ve been doing a lot of research about portraiture and heads and the various distortions that happen perceptually, biologically and formally...so that might be the topic.  

I know that sounds really bad.

I will do my best to work in some velociraptors and superheroes also.