Eye Update: Seeing Faces

“How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?” 

- C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

Since my last update, vision is my left eye is slightly improved (I can almost read the 20/30 line on the Snellen chart), but vision in right eye has become worse (double vision effect most likely due to the cataract).

But the most startling development since my cornea transplants is that I can see faces again, especially the subtleties of facial expressions. As my Fuchs Dystrophy progressed, I stopped seeing faces – all I could see were blurry spots where eyes, noses and mouths should be. Subtleties of facial expression were completely lost on me. Then, about a month or so after the first cornea transplant, I was startled by faces at the grocery store, coffee shop, and around town. Seeing a furrowed brow, an eyeroll, a quizzical look, or a smile – something most of us take for granted – was a novelty to me, a pleasant, and much welcome, surprise. I feel as though I’ve been missing out on a vital dimension of life.

In spite of the progress, my vision is still not good enough to resume my old practice of café sketching (I’ve tried but I need to see at least a certain level of detail in order to capture a likeness or personality in a café setting), so I have resorted to sketching from photographs. The above page was sketched from photos taken years ago of neighborhood kids (back when I was an illustration student trying to build a reference library of poses). I haven’t drawn faces in a while, and certainly not in a sketchbook like this. I am struggling to draw hands, and I don’t feel this page has the energy of café sketches executed on location, but I need to start somewhere. This page was sketched with a BLACKWING 602, a pencil I started using while working at DreamWorks long ago. Drawing with pencil on paper again takes me back to my childhood, and remembering why I wanted to be an artist in the first place. 

Sparring with the Asaro Head

Lately, I’ve been drawing from the Asaro Head – or, as I think of it, “sparring”. Artist John Asaro created various “planes of the head” models, including the classic (or complex) version and the “memorized” (or simple) version. Years ago, I posted my efforts from the classic version. Since recovering from my eye surgeries and getting back to drawing on paper, I decided to start with the simple version (I need to build stamina to tackle the classic version again). I tend to practice drawing like an athlete training for competition. I approach the Asaro head like a boxer stepping into the ring. It’s not enough to draw the Asaro head once or twice; you must draw the head multiple times from multiple angles. It’s a sparring match. You will become fatigued, you will make mistakes, you will need to correct your proportions, and there will be times where you feel like giving up. Drawing a page full of Asaro Heads requires stamina as well as skill. In this particular exercise, you might get one or two good drawings, and then botch the next one, ruining the page. On top of that, you want to compose the page so that all the views of the head look like they were intended to go together in a unified composition. I’m not sure I achieved that here, but the point is to practice. I had to do several of these pages before I felt ready to post one. My life drawing skills have been rusty, and I really needed this practice. The Asaro head makes a great sparring partner.

Below is my studio setup where I am drawing on an old easel build decades ago by my grandfather (a skillful carpenter by trade). The Asaro head is on a camera tripod. 

And just just for old time's sake, here again is one of my efforts from the Classic Asaro head which I posted online years ago. 

Sketchbook Studies of Trees

Now that I am able to draw in a sketchbook again (and actually see what I am doing), I am picking up one of my favorite media: colored pencil on toned paper. I really like the look of burnt sienna plus white on this paper. Studies of trees from around the Lake Tahoe area.

Drawing Kung Fu

As my vision heals and I am able to see fine lines on paper again, I have started drawing with Prismacolor pencils, a medium I love for sketching. My figure drawing skills are rusty, so I am practicing the figure manikin exercises from the Watts Atelier online program. In the online program, students draw using a number of manikins, but my favorite is the skeletal manikin. Jeff Watts did some wonderful demos featuring martial arts poses with this manikin, and I am taking my inspiration from there, although the skeletal manikin I am using here is more based on the one taught by Karl Gnass in his classes at the American Animation Institute many years ago. Perhaps I’ve modified it a bit to fit my own tastes, but I love using this manikin for action poses, especially martial arts. I used to practice martial arts many years ago, especially Tae Kwon Do, but my art career didn’t leave a lot of time for martial arts practice. Nevertheless, I like to pretend that I wield the pencil in the same spirit as the samurai wielding the sword, the mind totally focused at the point where the pencil touches the paper. For inspiration, I have dug up my old martial arts books from the 1980’s and used them as reference for these sketches. Great fun drawing on actual paper again!

Brazilian Jaguar Drawing Step-By-Step

More than a year ago, I drew the Brazilian Jaguar in graphite on illustration board, in preparation for painting. This was one of my last pencil drawings from the time leading up to my cornea transplant surgeries, as my vision was degrading to the point where I needed to wear heavy magnifying glasses to even see my drawing. Eventually, I decided it was too difficult to see even with the magnifiers, so I ended up painting the jaguar in Photoshop. But I did photograph the original graphite drawing in stages, so here is a breakdown of my drawing process step-by-step. I should mention that I used several reference photos of jaguars (including photos I took at the Sacramento Zoo), but the final drawing is not based on any one photo.  

Step 1: Lay-in

I started with the basic layout of the head, focusing on rhythms and alignments. You probably notice the light lines from my previous attempt to draw the jaguar - the head was not quite centered and the drawing wasn't working so me, so I erased it out and drew right over the previous attempt. Actually, I made a number of attempts before arriving at the final version.

Step 2: Alignments, Proportions, Structure

After the initial lay-in, I take time to carefully check proportions and alignments, before hammering out the structures and refining the line work. This is the time to correct any mistakes before taking the drawing too far. If everything is more or less working at this stage, I will develop the structures of head (hammering out the precise shapes of eyes, nose, mouth, ears).  

Step 3: Redrawing/Refinement

If the underlying structure of the head is working, I will further refine the line work. My lines get progressively darker as I tighten down the drawing.  

Step 4: Adding Detail

If I have a solid foundation to build on (proportions, alignments, underlying structure are all in place), I can begin to add detail. In this case, I was not concerned with copying the jaguar spots from photo reference; I tried to design spots so as to create interesting/appealing patterns.

Step 6: Refinement

Periodically, I will take time to check and recheck my proportions and alignments. If everything is more or less working, I will keep developing the structures of the head and refining the drawing. Notice that my lines are getting darker as the drawing develops. 

Step 7: Adding Tone

Finally we get to the part where I start adding tone. Typically, I spend a lot of time on the previous stages because I feel that tonal rendering is wasted energy is you don't build on a solid foundation. If the understructure is working, then the tones should fall in to place.

Step 8: Developing Tonal Range

At this point, I am using darker pencils (6B or even 9B lead) to push the darks as dark as graphite will allow. Also, I try to finesse the line work so that the drawing will look like as polished as I can make it (like a finished illustration, only in graphite).  

Step 9: Adding a Background

Now that I'm satisfied with the drawing of the jaguar head, I need to address the background. Initially, I tried several sketches with different background designs. including many more plant shapes. However, I felt that too many plants around the jaguar head were starting to remind me of the mane of a lion, so I drew fewer plants and added a large rectangular shape to help tie the composition together. I wanted the plants and the ears of the jaguar to overlap the edges of the rectangle, because I have always loved the effect of illustrations that break out of the borders - as if they were escaping the surface of the canvas or paper. 

Step 10: Developing the Background 

I did apply some workable spray fixative to the jaguar head to help preserve my drawing as I work on the background. Nevertheless, I do my best not to smudge the jaguar as I develop the background.  

Step 11: Refinement

At this stage, the drawing is approaching completion. Out of habit, I keep stopping to check my proportions, alignments, etc., making sure the previous steps in the drawing are working before I proceed with the rendering. When I feel the drawing is working, I will use blending stumps and tissue paper to gently blend the graphite. A kneaded eraser helps to adjust and edges, lighten any values that need to be lightened, and generally cleanup the drawing. 

As a final step, I break out the electric eraser to lighten the highlights in the eyes and on the nose. The final rendered stage can be seen up at the top of this blog post.

Eventually, I did paint the Brazilian Jaguar in photoshop. As my vision heals, I may make another attempt at painting the Jaguar in traditional media. Also, I am developing many more animal illustrations which I hope to post here in the future.

Eye Update: Drawing Unplugged

My most recent trip to the doctor’s office yielded mixed news. The good news is that my vision remains much better than it was prior to the cornea transplants. However, as noted in my last post, the cataracts are getting worse. Also, I learned about another factor possibly contributing to my current blurry vision: the eye undergoes changes as a result of the healing process after surgery, the surface of the eye is changing, sort of re-shaping itself, and vision can be unstable for a while. In spite of blurry vision, I can see well enough to draw in a sketchbook again. The above page was sketched on paper with an ink pen. I haven’t been able to work in a small sketchbook like this (and actually see what I’m doing) for quite some time. 

Some folks are curious as to how I managed to continue making art as my vision degraded, so here are some thoughts on living as an artist with Fuchs Dystrophy: the Fuchs progresses so slowly over years of your life that you just sort of adapt to it, making compromises little by little, until you are living in a daily fog and the fog just seems normal. As the Fuchs progressed, I started using a magnifying glass to read. Eventually the magnifying glass wasn’t enough, I adapted to reading “e-books” on my iPad or computer screen. I bought a large print keyboard for my computer so that I could see the keys.

As an artist who loves detail, I was most frustrated by the impact of Fuchs on my drawing; I stopped drawing in sketchbooks and started working on large drawing pads at my easel. I stopped going to the figure drawing sessions, or drawing portraits from live models (this is a startling admission from someone who dedicated years of his life to drawing from live models with almost religious zeal). For a time, I would try to sit up closer to the model stand (but then you risk blocking the view of the other artists). Eventually, I just gave up on life drawing altogether.

Since most of my income has come from animation background work created on a computer screen, it was easy to resort to digital art: the high contrast of the computer screen allowed me to see details much better, and the ability to endlessly edit my work was a temptation I couldn’t (still can’t) resist. I purchased a Wacom Cintiq 18x24” touch screen, on which I can enlarge drawings as much as needed. The Cintiq became my primary “canvas” for the past several years. I finished many animation backgrounds on it, as well as demos for students in my online classes.

My work area with animation backgrounds for ABC Mouse

During this time, I also purchased an iPad, and began learning ProCreate. Even with the smaller screen, the high contrast allows me to see details better. Add the ability to quickly enlarge sections of a drawing with “pinch and zoom”, plus the opportunity to endlessly edit my work, not to mention, organize and store multitudes of sketches where I can find them when needed… and I was seduced by the iPad. It soon replaced my sketchbook. Nearly all of my work for the past 5 years has been digital: I typically start with ideation sketches on the iPad, while finished works have been completed on the Cintiq.

As my vision heals, I am breaking out the traditional media again, rediscovering the tactile feel of ink pen on paper, or charcoal on newsprint. I am also struggling with my lack of practice in these media in recent years, which forces me to an uncomfortable realization: digital media can make us lazy. Traditional media can be unforgiving - you can’t endlessly “undo” mistakes or radically rework your composition in the final stages of a drawing (at least not without destroying what you have already done). I think this becomes a crutch for digital artists - we come to rely on easy solutions which the digital media provides. There is a term in art known as the “resistance of the medium” which entails the obstacles one must overcome to create art. For example, stone is hard and immalleable, so the sculptor must develop strong, skillful hands to meet the challenge. Ink cannot be erased, so the artist learns to be decisive with each stroke of the pen. Watercolor can be unpredictable, so the painter learns to be spontaneous, improvising with the flow of the water. I think these obstacles help shape our art, and force us to grow as artists. We learn from the struggle. Digital art tends to take away this struggle. 

One the other hand, it’s possible that digital media may be opening doors in making art in a way that recalls the impact of Gutenberg’s press on drawing during the High Renaissance. The printing press created a need for mass produced paper. As paper became less expensive and more readily available, artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo experimented with composition, exploring variations of figurative arrangements that just weren’t done when paper was rare. Renaissance pictorial composition became more daring, and drawing was elevated from a preparatory stage of painting to an art form until itself.

Could digital media have this kind of impact? I don’t know, but I can say that the opportunity to make changes to a painting - such as radically alter the color scheme late in the process, or resize/move things around, and save work at multiple stages so you don’t risk losing everything – has prompted me to try things I probably wouldn’t have tried when painting in acrylics or oils. For example, I’ve tried color combinations which I would have avoided previously, and I’ve completely reworked compositions in ways I probably wouldn’t have dared while working in graphite. For better or worse, digital media has enabled me to achieve the results seen in my recent portfolio pieces.

In any case, I am getting back to traditional media now and drawing unplugged. I’m enjoying the feel of the ink pen or brush on paper. Most of all, I’m enjoying making art without having to look into the glare of a computer screen.

Eye Update: Vision Worsens

Since my last update, vision in my right eye had peaked around 20/30. However, at last doctor visit, vision in both eyes was hovering around 20/40. Since then, vision has worsened, especially in my right eye. It’s somewhat anticlimactic, not to say disappointing, to still be experiencing vision problems after undergoing cornea transplants in each eye. However, my situation is actually pretty good and there is much to be grateful for. My doctor believes my current vision problems are caused by the cataracts, which progressed much faster than expected following the cornea transplants. This is good news, since cataracts are relatively easy to address. My situation could be much worse. For example, I’m not experiencing any retinal detachment (previously I had a retinal tear, but it was addressed long before it could lead to permanent blindness). I don’t have glaucoma or high eye pressure. I don’t have keratoconus (bulging of the corneas). My biggest fear was graft detachment, or rejection of the donor tissue in my eyes, but both cornea transplants are fully attached and functioning properly. Aside from the cataracts and some corneal scarring from the Fuchs Dystrophy, my eyes are relatively healthy. My doctor thinks that with cataract surgery, my vision might reach 20/25 or better.

I’ve been living with blurry vision for so long. It seems normal now. I was very hopeful when vision in my right eye reached 20/30 and I was able to see textures and details with such clarity, but now I’m back to fuzzy edges. I confess, it’s easy to lose patience with the healing process, but on the positive side, I’m not living in the fog as I was before the surgeries. Hopefully the cataract surgeries will enable me to see the fine details again.