OLIJ STUDIO
  • Home
    • Instagram
    • Biography
  • Studio
    • Workshops & Classes
    • Student Resources
  • Art
    • Travel Sketchbook
    • Fashion Illustrations >
      • Designer Bank Notes
    • Drawing from Life >
      • Still Life
    • Portraits
  • Blog

Holding on to Youth?

26/6/2014

0 Comments

 
Went to Bar Eli in the village yesterday, the owner is a French woman name Elizabeth or affectionately called Liz. She run's the bar with her second husband, a Catalan name Antonio Diminutivo, she speaks good English because she has worked in the UK for 8 years. I had a cafe con leche and was given lovely home-made apple muffins to try, they were delicious. After I asked her about being a subject of my project, she happily agreed to be sketched and eventually asked if I can draw her husband in a bigger format and in colour because she has a self-portrait produced by a friend a long time ago and thought this a great opportunity to have a similar one of her new husband placed next to hers. They’ve been together for one year and she has owned the bar for four.

Sketching Antonio and Liz today and working on the study for Antonio’s face as he looks currently was fun. He has a greying hair, and a distinguished jaw line and a playful but proud eyes. Then she gave me the picture of  a much younger Antonio to do the portrait on and I was surprised and entertained to see the difference. There's a certain beauty in what could be seen as a kitsch way of holding on to the past, a very distant past of her husband's youth. One she could not have experienced in real life in this image of young Antonio. The portrait is possibly her way of looking into the past as a way to bare the present? 

Here's the questions swimming around in my head today: 
1. How much do we look at our past photograph and yearn to be young again? 
2. Do you like your current image? If so, why and if you don't why not? 

I could attempt to answer these myself. I don't often look at my own past photograph, but I do relate to the memory of what I thought I look like then and what I 'thought' I look like now. I don't deny that there's a difference between reality and imagined reality and most of the time we all seem to live in the imagined one. I most of the time live in my imagined idea of what I look like, and I think that a lot of people do too. I don't really want to be young again, not really for the sake of how I look. I am quite happy with the way I look now. 

Whether I like my current image in a photograph? No, not always, most of the time, my imagined image is no where near the image looking back at me from the screen. When I do a portrait of people based on photograph I just took of them, and showed it to them, most people so far has never agreed that this is roughly what they look like. I enjoy this idiosyncratic but really question the way it can really torture people. 

There's a recent podcast on a similar topic on This American Life called Is that What I look like? I've always liked this podcast, as it's stories about real people and after each stories, remnants of those people either stick with you or left some impression.. To listen click here

What are your thoughts about it? I'd love to hear it. 
Picture
Two studies of Current Antonio and a study of his young picture. All in Led Pencil.
Picture
Young Antonio- Portrait in progress
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    SUSAN'S BLOG

    The blog explores, questions and ponders ideas, people and life. 

    Archives

    January 2021
    November 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    September 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    April 2018
    July 2017
    August 2016
    November 2015
    May 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    February 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013

    RSS Feed

Subscribe to Newsletter

Olij Studio
53 Niven Road
​Singapore 228401
2019 COPYRIGHT SUSAN OLIJ
For Inquiries. Email ME 
Proudly powered by Weebly