Grayson

In art, there is portraiture and there is character study. Some may argue they are one and the same thing and this is true to some extent but with one subtle difference; the study of character doesn't necessarily have true likeness as the central focus.

This face, for instance, may be recognisable as that of the artist, Grayson Perry, and although it isn't a bad likeness, it is not an entirely 'true' one either.

The main image above has actually been subtly altered from the first drawing, shown smaller, as although all the features and characteristics were all present and correct in the first drawing, I felt something was still a bit 'off'.

As a portrait artist, my default setting is to go after a likeness in the faces I draw, so the next morning I decided to 'tweak' the photographed image in photoshop to shift the features around a bit which produced something closer to his true likeness than before. Although, when viewed side by side, both depictions are clearly that of the same person.

In taking the trouble to tweak the features, it became clear to me that the character of the man is in fact all in the handling of the chalk pastels, making short blunt marks to achieve the unkempt, unapologetic self-awareness he exudes and the arrangement of the features to try to find an exact likeness is very much less important to the overall success of the drawing.

Here, I have put together a short clip of the image shifting between the two states and also a comparison strip of both images with the reference picture I used to demonstrate further how both images work and the subtle differences were in the end, immaterial when it came to capturing his character.