What's Your Visual Pulse?

Looking at drawings of faces

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Your Visual Pulse!

Hi everyone!!!

Here’s something we do at SAW now and then, we call it the VISUAL PULSE.

What we do is find a handful (3 is enough, but do a lot more if you can) of DRAWN FACES that you are really attracted to (or "drawn to", haha.) See if you can go beyond your usual favorites and find drawn faces elsewhere, maybe even in other students' work.

I mean, go looking around at your favorite art, but maybe some less favorite art, and take screengrabs or whatever.

You're looking for faces that you want to stare at. Faces that you can't keep from looking at. (For that reason, I tended to find faces staring straight on, but you don't have to do that...)

These may or may not be your favorite comics. For instance, I didn't include any Eddie Cambell or anything from some of my favorite graphic novels by Alison Bechdel or David B, but I did include a Robert Crumb drawing of a really jerky guy that I just love staring at.

I call it "Visual Pulse" because I think there's some sort of pulse between us and the face staring back.

The interesting thing is you may find some surprises. For me, I was surprised at how many had big silly lips, something I've never drawn, but now I think I am going to do it! And, also, a lot had eyeglasses...

Give it a try! Here's a dozen or so of mine. 

(From top to bottom: Jen Sandwich, Julie Doucet, Derek Ballard, Vanessa Davis, Robert Crumb, Jim Davis, Harold Gray, Lynda Barry, RF Outcault.)

And then draw them, as is. What do we sense/feel as we draw them?

Here are my redraws btw, you might take a totally different tack. (And I added a couple more.)

What’s your visual pulse? What happens when you stare at a cartoon (drawn) face?

Thanks for reading!