sketches

Day two hundred and seven: A colleague at work showed me a book with pictures mimicking heads designed by the 17th-century French academy artist Charles le Brun. The original illustrations were made to demonstrate “Heads Representing the Various Passions of the Soul as They are Expressed in the Human Countenance.” I couldn’t resist making snapshots of a couple of them, as candidates for today’s sketch. This one, titled “Anger,” went along with a description that observed “the Eye brows are sometimes elevated & sometimes sunk down equally” and lips “making a cruel and disdainful grin.” I enjoyed copying part of the face, and imitating the controlled hatch marks of the engraving. Sometimes I lost patience with it though, and resorted to my own chicken-scratching way of filling in areas of shadow.