Aliferous

While sketching a portrait this February to process the best news I’ve ever received, I realized it had been about a decade since I had done a self portrait.

Aliferous

I was reminded of something a painting professor said — don’t paint what you think is there, just paint what is there. Simple concept, and a reminder not to draw objects based on what you think they look like, or remember them to look like, but instead draw them based off the shape and contrast correlation that objectively exists in the very real world. And, while it’s solid advice for realism, it misses the mark entirely for anything you might be feeling. If you only ever rendered what was visible, you’d only ever have reality. Not emotion, or newness, or electricity, or depth. And things might remain exactly as they’ve always been. 


Once you decide what something really does feel like, and not just what you think it feels like, then it’s just like most things, an agreement between head and hand. 


Here’s what I used to think a racing heart felt like. I now know it to be a body bursting with hummingbirds.