I have begun to appreciate my daily sessions in front of the TV coverage of the World Snooker Championship. Each day for the past week I have paused the coverage at what looks like an interesting moment, and I have drawn a portrait of one of the participants (players or journalist/commentators). Actually, I have become quite pleased with the results, with a perceptible improvement over the week. I shall certainly keep it up until the end of the championship. One thing I have begun to appreciate, however, and that is the difference between drawing from a paused shot on the TV screen and doing a portrait with a live model.
I have not done many portraits in the past, but I am becoming aware of the fact that when you are producing a portrait in the presence of a live model it is possible to attend to subtle differences in expression. The human face is naturally mobile, and there is a definite artificiality about working from a source which necessarily eliminates this. Probably the particular aspect of the exercise that has brought this home to me more than any other is the drawing of the eyes. It is hard to be clear about exactly what is involved here, but it struck me this afternoon that a person is always intending something or responding to something. The location of the most important aspect of this engagement with the world is probably the eyes. Working from a TV screen shot (or from any kind of photograph, I suppose) it is hard to avoid a kind of deadness. Another way of putting the difference, it seems to me, is that a likeness is not necessarily a portrait.
Certainly I will sustain my current exercises with the TV until the end of the snooker series. It is a great training in observation, as well as in the control of the medium. Nevertheless, I am tempted to try a “proper” portrait, with a live sitter, in the near future.