Meindert Fennema

Distortion is not limited to caricatures. Here Meindert Fennema confronts his twisted image of Boris van de Ham with Geert Wilders. A well known trick in the public debate: first distort the views of your opponent and than fight those distorted views. 

NRC Handelsblad 31 Aug 2010

How can one person resemble two very different persons?

I once visited a class mate and was introduced to her mother.  They looked remarkably alike.  Then her father walked in the room and he was her spitting image as well.  This was weird, because her father and mother didn't resemble one another at all! So from C looks like A and C looks like B, it does not necessarily follow that A looks like B.

Apparently it is possible that the determining features for one face sit e.g in the mouth and eyes and for another e.g in the eyebrows and nose.  A third face can then combine all of these features and look like both (see illustration).  When making portraits it is important to look for such determining features.

JB Charles / Willem Nagel

A biography has been published about Willem Nagel (1910 - 1983, pseudonym JB Charles).  For this man of  many talents, activities and identities, the war never ended. I tried to capture that in the atmosphere and with the somewhat 'wounded' lines. 

Three features of a good portrait

People often comment on how a painting has captured the essence, the soul of a person.  Most of the time this is utter nonsense. Because painted portraits don't have captions, people fill in the meaning themselves.  And so they read all sorts of deep insights into the squint of the eyes, the elusive smile, the slight frown, the position of the little finger, etc, etc, etc.  These insights are in the mind of the beholder, not in the painting.  Different viewers see different traits in the same portrait. Nothing wrong with that.

The artist can help to stimulate the viewer by making sure that each portrait contains some of the following three features:
1. it resembles the person depicted (more about that in the future)
2. it contains an idea, refers to something, creates an intriguing atmosphere
3. it is sufficiently pleasing to the eye to revisit the portrait a couple of times
These features can compensate for one another to a certain degree, but good portraits have at least some of each.

Sculpting with clean fingers

My son drew my attention to Sculptris, a software program that allows you to sculpt on your screen.  It is magical!  You start with a ball and in no time you've created a figure, a car or in this case a North Korea style bust of Wilders. Check it out on Sculptris.com.  The download is small (only 3 MB) and free!

Jan Blokker

Jan Blokker died on July 6, 2010.  He was a grumpy man, already long before he was old. His columns often expressed  strong views, with little room for  nuances. So here's my portrait of the man who had such a strong influence on the left side of public opinion in the Netherlands.
Watercolour and pencil, 20 x 30 cm.  Published in Vrij Nederland July 17, 2010

Welcome to my exploration of the human face

I've always been fascinated by the human face.  As a small boy I discovered how the forehead and the nose and the mouth were connected.  Piles of books and pictures with faces line my studio. I can't help staring at faces in crowds and wanting to draw them.  At TED I talked about Leonardo's face (click here).  My website shows more than 1200 portraits which I've made through the years. And so on.  It is time for a blog about the human face.  I hope you'll enjoy it.