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.