Hung my mom's portrait in the hallway where I have to walk past it to pee at 3am

I've been fighting this piece since March. Charcoal on paper, 40x60, my mother at 29, which is two years younger than I am now. I used a photo I hadn't looked at in probably a decade, one where she's laughing with her whole face and you can't tell anything was wrong yet.

Drew it four times. Burned the second one, actually put it in the fire pit out back, which felt dramatic and then felt correct.

The thing that finally did it was stopping trying to make her look like the photo and just drawing the mouth from memory. Her real mouth, the one she got when she was tired. Not the smile. I cried a little, which is embarrassing to type but there it is.

It's hanging now. Cheap black frame from the craft store, nothing fancy. And every night I get up around 3 to pee and walk right past her face in the dark and I still don't know if it's good. But it's UP. It's on a wall, in my house, where people will see it.

Some work you make to show people and some work you make to put something down. This one was the second kind and I'm only now figuring out that counts as a win too.

6comments

Add your reply to this discussion…

6 comments

Dimitra Vasilakis·2w

Burning the second one was probably the smartest thing you did in this whole process. You can't keep drawing a face while the wrong version is still sitting in the room with you.

I work in mosaic, and the material punishes indecision differently, but it's the same trap. Every time I try to copy a photograph stone for stone I make something dead. It's accurate and it has nothing in it. The moment I work from what I remember of the person instead of what the paper says, it comes alive. The mouth especially. A mouth in a photo is caught mid-motion, it's not the mouth they had.

40x60 in charcoal is a lot of real estate to fight with. Charcoal forgives nothing, it smudges the second you hesitate. Respect for finishing it.

Margaret Hsu·2w

The mouth from memory is the honest part, and it is also the part you cannot fake. In botanical work I run into a mild version of this constantly. A pressed specimen is perfectly accurate and completely inert. The drawing has to come from a plant I have actually held, or it shows.

Your point about the photo catching a mouth mid-motion is exactly right. A photograph is one instant chosen by the shutter, not the face. The face is the average of ten thousand instants, and that average lives only in the people who looked at it. So you are not working less accurately than the camera. You are working from a better source.

Stone for stone, as you put it, is the trap in every medium. Yours just makes you pay for it by the piece.

Sol ReyesOP·2w

"The face is the average of ten thousand instants." I'm going to be saying that to people who don't care for the rest of my life.

The pressed specimen thing is exactly it. Accurate and inert. I spent four months trying to be accurate, and everything I made was dead on arrival. The second one got burned and you're right, I couldn't draw her while that version was in the house.

Then I stopped looking at the photo and drew the mouth she'd get at 11pm when the day had already used her up. That was her. That's the one I couldn't have gotten any other way, because no one ever took a picture of it.

You're not working less accurately than the camera. That unlocked something, thank you. I've been treating the camera like it's the truth and me like I'm a bad copy of it. Wrong way round the whole time.

Held a plant, drew the plant. Yeah. I'm keeping that.

Sol ReyesOP·2w

Mosaic, god. That's a medium with no mercy, you can't fudge a line, every piece either sits right or it doesn't. Stone for stone, dead. Yeah. I know exactly what you mean.

And the mouth thing, yes. A photo mouth is a mouth mid-sentence, mid-laugh, mid-something. It's not the mouth that was waiting for you at the kitchen table at 11pm. Those are two different women and I spent four months drawing the wrong one.

The burning, people keep telling me it was smart, but honestly it was mostly rage lol. I was two hours in and I could feel it going wrong again and I just thought, no. Not in my house. Dragged the whole board out back in the dark. Felt insane. Felt great.

What's the mosaic of, if you don't mind me asking. A person? I want to see how somebody works from memory when the material won't let you erase.

Kasia Nowak·2w

The mouth from memory instead of the mouth from the photo. That is the whole thing, I think. Photos lie a little, they freeze a face into the one second it was caught, and you end up drawing the photograph instead of the person. I have done this with my own father maybe seven times and it never worked until I stopped looking.

Burning the second one is not dramatic. It is just honest. Some of them need to go.

And the 3am hallway placement, walking past her half asleep, that is the real test of whether a portrait is alive. If it survives tired eyes it is finished. I am sorry about your mother. This sounds like a good one, and I do not say that lightly.

Sol ReyesOP·2w

Seven times on your father and it never worked until you stopped looking. God. That's the sentence I'm going to be chewing on all week. You're right, photos DO freeze them, and then you spend months lovingly copying a single second of a person and wondering why the paper feels dead.

The 3am thing was accidental, I just don't have another hallway, but you're right that it's the real test. Half asleep I don't see the drawing. I just see her. That's the first time that's happened with her face and it's a lot, honestly. Some nights I stand there longer than I meant to.

I'm sorry about your father. Seven tries isn't stubbornness, that's love with nowhere to put itself. What did it feel like the first time it finally landed?