I cannot draw men!

I am making this post to lament about my inability to draw men. Faces, body structure, I just cannot capture the huMAN element at all! ARGH! This frustrates me, that I feel so limited in my abilities, in my creativity. That I cannot even make caricatures of people I know, or images of people I know, or of people that actually EXIST. I’m frustrated! Men, to a greater extent, plague my drawing hand to no ends. Here I will post some random observation because I never noted it until today.

First off, more hair girls.

I drew her last night before passing out. I find myself obsessed with making a surreal face. Not necessarily in the anime style, but not finding myself following any sort of traditional drawing style. I’m simply exploring the power of the line. Especially with hair. It’s like looking at hair first thing in the morning in sunlight. It dances with the rays. It deflects light in strange ways. Sometimes it doesn’t look like its there, yet we know that it IS there. Hair, light, both. It’s intriguing.

This resembles what a tired self-portrait would be in this style. It’s pretty close. Big lips. Tired eyes. Hair that doesn’t know where to go most of the time. It’s even parted the way my hair is naturally parted. But why would this really be a self-portrait? Because it showcases my tiredneess of the world around me. That existence seems draining, almost, instead of encouraging, worthwhile, peaceful, meaningful. Flat lines, flat composure. Funny nose. Definitely a tired self-portrait. But I like it. I’m drawn to it. It’s an image I won’t neglect. Its not completely accurate either. For one thing, my hair is actually longer now. Finally!

She’s obscure, both in composure and in her attitude. But she HAS attitude. That’s what strikes me the most. Drew this one this morning, first thing. She could be strawberry blonde with brown eyes. But not a blonde. I don’t know why. She’s not that striking, I think, in her facial structure. Maybe its the lack of big lips. Hm.

I definitely do have fun making scribbles in this style. They remind me of my swirl pieces. Only with my .5 pencil instead of fine point sharpies. Less chances of getting high from fumes -lol!

Now begins the reason why I felt so devastated earlier in my post. Roni Weiss asked me to draw sketches of him. I’m not good of people I know. I’m even worse with people I DON’T know. David Hoang is a true artist, in my humble opinion! I was delaying in sketching out Roni, mainly because I’d been busy. Even in my escapism to Bauhaus, I’d leave the laptop at home, where his images were on my desktop for reference-on-the-go. But alas! I never really got around to it. So after his Nth message (I’ve lost track of how many requests he sent me), I scribbled something. And I was about to just crumble it up and recycle the piece of paper until I decided to give it another try.

Attempt 2. I know what doesn’t look “right” but at the same time, I cannot get myself to put it out the way it ought to be. I’m frustrated after this one, even more so, so I took a cheese and cupcake break and thought about what was bothering me so much about making his sketch.

Maybe its the hair. Maybe its the lack of glasses. Glasses are fun. Shiny. Did I mention fun and shiny? Because I like fun and shiny. He’s also got this big shit-eating grin. Its rather infectious, I think. Most men don’t carry such a jovial aura around them -and I’m not quite sure what I’m trying to capture in my sketches yet. Guess its just time for me to learn more about Roni.

Enter Matt. I met him a little over a year ago. I decided to do a quick experiment. I drew sketches based on my friends’ profile picture. I chose 2 men: the first one being Matt because of our history. I’ve known him longest of the three (Roni, Matt, and Micah), yet have only spent so much time with the philosopher. And as I look at the image of Matt, it captures his smirk’s personality that I know rather well. He talked more than me -and finding a man that talked more than me was both surprising and annoying. I can tolerate him in doses

Pleased and genuinely surprised by Matt’s sketch, I did a quick doodle of Micah, whom I’ve only known since December, but have been spending much more time & energy with in communication to recent memory. How much more confident I was in getting this out! I think it also has to do with an ideal I hold on men in general (athletic, lean All-American boy next door + clean cut executive style) so to sketch Micah out was much easier. It was also the quickest sketch. Then again, the way I met Micah is pretty memorable, so maybe I’m going to have the image of boy flying through the grocery store getting last minute supplies to ring in the new year in style only befit of his personality.

So back to Roni. I did one more doodle, which I promptly threw into the recycling bin, and threw this one together, pretending that he was super upset at me (he probably is…) and whatdoyaknow, I think this was pretty fun, regardless of how “close” it was to him! The internet can only show so much of someone’s personality and I can only translate so much of that to the paper fibers before me.

And so I hope you all enjoyed this set. I’m going to finish packing. I have to work the next three days, and then fly out Sunday afternoon! Ciao for now!