Week 7 Results: 50/100 Faces

You know that feeling when you finally finished a 600 rep workout you thought would take half an hour but took you two? And even after the half hour mark when you went "WTF, I thought I was so badass?" you still decided to keep going? And then when you're done you feel like you need to throw up and you have no idea why you would be stupid enough to put yourself through something like that? That is...until you look in a mirror and realize how effing hot you're getting. Well that was basically how yesterday felt when I sat my ass down and gave myself 3 hours to do 18 drawings....ha. ha. ha. 

I ended up having to use a timer to keep myself from getting too detailed and stuff, so most of these are more or less 15 minute sketches. And here you're thinking...but wait, that should only add up to 4.5 hours, don't be such a wuss! The drawings themselves probably took about 5...consecutive hours. But the research in between killed off another 3 or so. Now after having been so thorough on what I'm gonna call the "Middle Eastern" appearance (I know not all the countries I picked fall under the official Middle East blanket) I feel like I cheated Asia a bit in my last post and rushed through it a bit..Hm.

Something I'm starting to realize though...I could pretty much dedicate 100 drawings to each ethnicity and still have no idea what I'm doing. This "classifying business is hard. I tried looking at multiple faces from the same country and half combining the most prominent features with a photo of a face...stalking people's flickr accounts turns out to be quite handy, hint hint. This was actually my first time drawing faces from the Middle East, and while I feel more confident in creating this appearance now, I still can't point out too many distinctive features without finding a face to completely contradict everything I write here. So here goes (I actually took notes as I drew this time so I'm not just B.S.ing from the top of my head)

• The almond shaped eye seems to be a key feature of most of the faces I drew. Some countries showed a very prominent lower lid (if you have no idea what I'm talking about look at a Chinese eye and an Indian eye for example) which kind of deepened with age, giving a "sunken" appearance to the eyes
• The nasal base varies in thickness either being pointy (look at faces from India) to wide (Israel) or even having a "double chin" sort of appearance (yes my vocab is very rich, bite me). One definitely prominent thing was that the nasal base drooped lower than the nostrils for all countries. (score!)
• Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, And Saudi Arabia had fairly chiseled and square faces, wheras going east, west, or south seemed to show more elongated faces, and softer features (eg. full cheeks)
• A lot more wrinkles in older age than my previous studies
• the foreheads don't tend to bulge out or recede, but stay pretty flay and low for most countries. Also the brow ridge isn't as prominent, such as South-East Asia or certain African types
• The eyebrows tend to sit pretty horizontal, casting a darker shadow over the eyes
• lips can range from plump to narrow (seems to be in the same range as the sharp/soft features)
• Eyelashes are super long and dark (who needs makeup?) which pair gorgeously with the dark eyes
• Egypt seems to have cases of lighter hair and eye colour but most other countries stay a dark brown to black.

Now wasn't that just informative and thorough? And you thought I was wasting time devouring my christmas chocolate (done), watching movies (did that too) and doing not a lot of productive things (wrong). And speaking of good movies, check out that new one "The Best Exotic Marygold Hotel". A really great feel good movie, with some unusual situations, and lovey-dovey shit that makes me get all "shojo-ey". It's nice knowing love can happen whenever, wherever, and you don't have to look like Hiedi Klum to be happy. : D

Anywho...I hard rumours of actual snow outside, and realized I haven't stepped out since last...not sure when, so I'm gonna go clear my head and move on to the next part of this challenge!! 

Week 7 Results: 32/100 Faces

So...it's been like a month since I had any activity here...oops. I swear I have been arting my butt off, just  in a more portfolio-oriented way. Then while trying to think of what people would like to see in my portfolio I realized how dumb it would be to create projects just "for the portfolio". Sure it's important to include elements they're looking for in my work but I figured it would be as dumb of an idea as submitting a bunch of animal drawing from random photos or one minute gestures from life drawing....see where I'm going with this? If I can tell if an art piece is "forced" (drawn for the sake of crowd pleasing) then I'm pretty sure the profs at all the schools I'm applying to will be. And considering the calibre of work I see from the students I stalk diligently follow, everything is both amazing and clearly inspired. 

So yeah, I'm back to this. Since this was a project I was having a ton of fun with to begin with, learning a lot from it, and will probably have a few pieces to add to the portfolio as a result along with my personal projects, I say we keep on going! 

But mostly I've been slacking due to workload going up and me doing a bit of overtime for the last month. It's all over now, so I no longer have any more excuses!

So let's talk politically correctly about this weeks results. As you can see, I was focusing on East and Southeast Asian faces...and I did most of these today actually. Could've kept going once I started googling certain high cheekboned, pronounced jawline personalities..ahem. But I stopped myself! Ironically it was interesting trying to find a very "natural" look to people, and I'm sure this will apply to any country I try to find. While the child faces had a very distinct appearance, many adult photos ended up being overly photoshopped or even perhaps involved plastic surgery. SO....I resorted to using weird keywords such as "farmer" or "traditional" to find ACTUAL photos of people, you know, wrinkles and all. Not that asia seems to know what wrinkles are.....> : <

So my summary of "distinct" features for this round? Here goes:

Basically no country looks like any other country. 

Mhm. Sad. And obvious, I know. And here you thought I would help you.

But! I did notice a few little tidbits I'd like to point out. If I'm wrong or offensive, shoot me.

The more south you go (eg: vietnam, thailand):

• the larger and rounder the eyes. 
• rounder cheeks in women and children
• fuller lips
• broader nose and flatter bridge of nose

The more north you go (eg: mid-north china, korea)

• babies still have very round eyes but as they grow up they get narrower (200 students in china worth of proof for me is enough)
• more pronounced bridge of nose
• bottom lip can both be a single curve or two "pouches"
• philtrum to upper lip connection is very pronounced
• sharp, high cheek bones

Colder climates (eg: mongolia, tibet)

• square jawline
• soft curves to the face, particularly the cheeks
• eyes tend to almost slant upwards at the ends
• hair color tends to be lighter and occasionally have some wave to it

So...that's my 2 cents on the whole bit. Another thing I've noticed more are more...people are just so damn beautiful. Like, every single person, whether it be a classical kind of beauty or a really unique, interesting look. 

And lastly......Merry Christmas!