Portrait #10: Alanna (and me)

Alanna's portrait was the first during which she also drew me. It was very intense (and postmodern!) because we were both listening to our own music and having our own experience fueling those emotions into codifying our visual perceptions of each other. We were using different media (I was using graphite and she was using a micron pen on a small sketch pad) so there are also inherent stylistic differences since she didn't have as many smudgy gradients and I didn't have as much of a contrast between lights and darks. Maybe that is what pushed me to really dig in with the graphite stick to up the contrast. I think people who walked by us in the library were kind of confused about what was going on. Because whatever it was, it was out of place and hella intense.



In each portrait there is a different emphasized area or technique, which isn't always conscious but always interesting to read into depending on the relationship. I realized recently that since most of my sitters are doing homework while I draw them, their gaze in the direction of their hands. While hands are usually the last thing I think to draw, the drawing looks incomplete without putting them in since that is, in some ways, the focal point. In Alanna's portrait I tried to resist this temptation to scratch in the hands at the end, but I think they are still not as worked out as the folds in her sweatshirt or her facial expression. I consider that a strength in the rendering of her computer since it makes apple's design look a little silly instead of severely geometric. (My first year I did a whole painting series on people and computers... more later on the Fe Fy Fo Femme blog.)

Anyway here is the drawing Alanna did of me:


I'm pretty pleased with it because she gave me very strong, Jewish features in this really stylized way. I wouldn't say that the visual image is how I see myself exactly but I'd say it's generally flattering. I also think it's kind of funny that she included my lower back sticking out from my clothes on the side. Alanna is apparently a very truthful draughtsperson-- something I wouldn't know from what I've seen of her conceptual sculpture and photography work. It'll be interesting to compare how I draw myself as a final portrait for this project to the portrait Alanna drew of me. (Foreshadowing????)

PS. I feel that she made me look Byzantine like these lambs.