Moving ahead with the second half of Chapter Nine of my book, Taking Turns and struggling again. As you can see with a quick perusal through what I’ve posted thus far, I am combining a fictionalized patient story in comic form with a related, non-fictional oral history, illustrated by portraits of the narrator.
Argh those portraits! When I started, I used a comic-like caricature based on a photo.
Caricature is what I do most instinctively, but I’ve come to feel that simple caricatures such as this one do not do the serious nature of the oral histories, or my feeling for my narrators, justice.
I challenged myself to do better. I read a few books on doing portraits, and practiced as much as I could. And I felt they were getting better, this portrait thing was going very well. I even posted a success blog babbling on how well this was going. I was particularly pleased with this one.
Then I learned that the person depicted above isn’t very fond of this rendering. Sigh.
Drawing people you know and care about, when you have a limited skill base as I do, is really hard!!! Whine whine whine moan whine.
The amazing artist and educator Riva Lehrer was kind enough to recently take a look at the paintings I’ve done for this book, and her reaction was that she could see from the paintings that I truly care about the people I am painting. That helps.
But here I am again, the project update delayed because I am hung up on another portrait that after several attempts is not what I want it to be, and in fact doesn’t really resemble the person I am intending to depict. At all.
In my frustration, I turn to the work of artists I have been influenced by and respect. Lynda Barry, Maira Kalman, and Heather McAdams have all done portraits that don’t really look like their subjects, but instead evoke them, a sort of “their-style version” of their subjects. But I’m no Lynda Barry, Maira Kalman, or Heather McAdams.
I’m reminded of a blog post about the work of UK artist Darryl Cunningham called “Show Us Your Betas.” (At least in my mind that’s what it was called. Turns out it’s actually “Share Your Betas.” Huh. I thought it had a fun New Orleans thing going. I’m learning not to trust my memory.) The point of the story is that Darryl posts the drafts of his comic bits just finished. People give him corrections, point out things, etc.
I tend to be resistant to much input on an unfinished project. But in this case, I’m asking. What should I do about this struggle I’m having with the portraits I create not really resembling the person they are intended to represent???
One option that has come to mind is to skip my portraits entirely and insert black & white photos of my narrators into the oral histories. This could work, but would it be too jarring in contrast with the drawings of the patient story?
Another option is to just shut up and keep moving forward.
Thoughts?