I'm not talking about any meaningless acquittal "Ayes!" here I'm talking about art.
Now if you do any kind of drawing of human subjects a bit of the study of anatomy is in order. You need to know how humans look not from memory or an educated guess but you have to actually look because for all the zillions of times you have looked at people you really weren't looking at them with an artist's eye, you were just generally looking. Cops ask people what the suspect looked like all the time and all the time they just get general answers because people never really look like at people like cops look at people, taking in the details. It's like that.
When it comes to art, if you want to accurately portray a subject, you can't go at it haphazardly because if you do, that's exactly what you'll get. Something that kinda looks like the subject but not really. So you have to break down subjects into details. Just how does that shadow crease the face? Where does it start, where does it end, how does it end, does it fade away or is there a sharp break? Does the nose have a gradual, sloping curve under the left nostril or is it a wide curve that calls for the pencil to spread that curve out farther than you think it should?
You can tell right away if you're far off the mark and you can tell, when looking at what you've drawn from a distance, if things look proportional and sometimes there is just something wrong but you don't know what it is. If that's the case, there are probably more than a few things out of proportion.
All this I have learned and a whole lot more from making drawings of faces. I'm no Raphael, Michelangelo, or Rembrandt but I can make faces look recognizable, most of the time at least, to the layman. I guess that's a measure of talent, skill, and determined application but what really matters is that things are not so much in perfect proportion far as the ears, nose, mouth, chin, eyebrows, or the shape of the head is concerned. What matters most is the eyes.
A stubborn conviction that amateur artists have is that eyes are super important. Just look at their drawings of faces sometimes. The eyes are almost always drawn too big. Perhaps these artists are unconsciously trying to capture some quality (but you'll never capture that if your renditions of eyes are anatomically incorrect!).
Eyes are just one part of any composition but boy do they ever play a part. Viewers are fixated by eyes. What we look at are the eyes, always, because we think that the soul or essence of the being resides behind them. Some people say that that is true but if that is so why do we also place this significance on inanimate objects, things that obviously don't have souls, things like teddy bears, stuffed animals, and dolls?
I noticed this fixation on eyes phenomenon through doing drawings of faces. I could get away with things being out of proportion but I could never get away with the eyes being too big or too small, with them being crooked, one lower than the other, or if one eye was looking in a different direction than the other. As well, the iris' of eyes have to be perfectly round. That is an anantomical absolute. There are never any oval iris in eyes. Basically, the eye itself is a perfect ball. Upon that perfect ball sits a perfectly round iris and within that perfectly round iris sits a perfectly round pupil- in the exact center of the iris.
Seen from the side, iris' appear elliptical (not oval- there is a difference) in shape, ellipses being circles seen from an angle, and this follows the laws of physics perfectly. When a circle moves (is turned) in any direction from dead straight on, as viewed by a viewer, it automatically becomes an ellipse to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the degree of the turn.
Physics also rules the world of light and shadow unerringly. Light must be reflected highest in the direction of the light source and shadows must always match the opposite of the light source (you'll find that in Art 201).
While all that is true, the importance of it pales compared to what draws people's attention and that is always the eyes. "So the shadow of the subject is a little bit off? I didn't notice. I was looking at the face”.
It's amazing to me how much emphasis we place on eyes because far as I know, the soul isn't hiding behind them nor is the essence of any being to be found there. There is a lot going on when we are with people, right? We're taking in tons of information. Body language, facial expressions, dress, mannerisms, tones of voice, word choices, smells, facial hair, tats, makeup, scars, etc. but damn those eyes! Soooo much to be found there but no matter how much we search we seem to find only endless mysteries deep within.
Bet you’re looking at her eye.
Daniel Fazio- Unsplash.com
Here's something artist's know- eyes are no more important than anything else, in the grand scheme of things. Like ears, nostrils, and jawlines, eyes are merely symbols. We need symbols in order to forget the fact that the 'person' we're talking to isn't really a person at all. He or she is just a bunch of component parts and most (if not all of those parts) were simply presented to them at birth. Blessed with good looks or cursed with bad, Joe or Jane got stuck with those characteristics the moment they were born and though they have tried to improve upon what they were given through working out, dressing sharp, careful grooming, or even plastic surgery there is only so much that can be done.
Whatever. Doesn't matter. The essence of a person can never (and will never) be seen. Best we can do is think that essence can be found in the eyes cuz' it sure as hell won't be found in looking in somebody's ears.
Another thing that I might add to this post is that through doing art I have undergone an existential crisis of sorts because I fully realize now that hell yeah we're just a bunch of curves and lines that offer others a symbolic representation of who we really are and the best we can do is walk around pretending that these suits of clothes we're wearing, these bodies, are 'real'. Well, they aren't. They don't last. While it might be fun to play singular roles eventually we realize that the masks we're wearing aren't real and neither are the ones that others' are sporting but it sure makes things interesting for awhile.
It continuously surprises me just how little it takes to alter the appearance of any of my drawing subjects. A slight downturn of a line, the extension of an eyebrow, a slight narrowing of the nose.....
....or the oh so subtle variations of the eyelids. The eyeballs themselves never change but the coverings of them and what surrounds them do! The possibilities are endless.
There are a lot of things that make up every individual's face is what I'm trying to say and though the eyes ought to be simple things they, correctly drawn, seem to add a mysterious something that defines 'character' and I still, after doing numerous drawings and doing research on the phenomenon, can't define what that 'something' is. I can only say that if you don't get those eyes to look right the whole picture is going to look off and nobody is going to be very interested in looking at it for long.
But- if you get the eyes right- you've got a picture!