Stretching a Face

Sometimes when I’m sketching a portrait from life I just try to draw the person the way they appear to me, without exaggerating anything too much.


Here’s a pencil study of the accordion player Terry Winch performing a concert of Irish music.



Other times I use my sketchbook to experiment. Instead of drawing the way these two musicians actually appeared to my retina, I wanted to try to capture the way their personalities struck my mind. That meant exaggerating a few things and leaving out some details (it helped that I was sitting pretty far away from the stage).


Another time I heard a lecture about Beethoven by Harvard professor Robert Levin. He talked about how Beethoven stretched the limits of the piano keyboard, and pushed the boundaries of the musical forms. Without thinking about it, I found myself stretching his face like a piece of kneaded eraser.