Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Extreme Expressions

This detail of a painting from Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara shows a singer in a millstone ruff.
Detail of Bilgewater Chorus, oil, 

In the photo reference I push the expression to the limit. It's not easy to hold an expression like this for very long, and it's rare to get a chance in art school to paint from a model with an extreme expression.
Photos courtesy Paul Ekman
But faces are highly mobile and expressive, and if you stop-frame a video of people acting and reacting, their faces are constantly changing with brief expressions. 

One of the pioneers of the study of expressions was Paul Ekman, who began his research in the 1950s, and introduced the concept of microexpressions. 
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1 comment:

  1. Susan KrzywickiFebruary 20, 2020 at 2:17 PM

    I've read bits of Eckman's book but had a hard time trying to figure out how to use any of it in real life. It took so much concentration to even start looking at faces this way - not do-able in ordinary life. Have you found a way to make this practical in your daily work?

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