Watch the Hair

When you’re practicing faces and figures a lot, it’s easy to start getting obsessed with them. Clearly, this is why portraiture is one of the central modes of visual art. Honestly, I’m surprised this is not more central to other types of art, like cinema: videos of dancing bodies and expressive faces abstracted from story and setting.

I guess this is one of the niches that Instagram and short form content was basically designed to fill. Face gymnastics and tiny little synchronized, dancing videos are incredibly addicting, and I’m almost scared to ask how much Internet traffic and advertising revenue is driven by this inclination we have to stop and stare.

As for this sketch, this face was being used to practice variation in features, angle of view, and personality through interesting features. At the end, I was kind of basing him on a rockabilly or greaser punk persona.