"Face-off" drabbles by Neville Hunt

Smoke and mirror

Face-off #8

She swallowed a paracetamol and ibuprofen cocktail to blast her headache and decided she needed something to take her mind off it. Back to the self-portraits. All concerns from yesterday obliterated.. it must have just been cabin fever from lockdown.

Positioning herself in front of the mirror again, she drew and she drew. By the end of the morning she had three more versions of herself. She felt she was getting better at this portraiture lark. After lunch and a spliff, she adjusted her hair for a different look and turned the mirror slightly for a three quarters angle.

Livin’ it large

Face-off #7

‘Now I definitely didn’t say that!’ thought Claire, but she also thought something odd was going on in her head. She thought that the best thing to do might be to go to the fridge, pour herself a large glass of Pinot Grigio and if she heard any more strange talking in her head, have another.... and another... and so on.

This did the trick, though not through any neurological chemistry, but by sending her off to sleep. On waking, it wasn’t sounds in her head that she worried about, but stopping the thumping headache. Everything else was completely forgotten...

Look hue’s talking

Face-off #6

Attempt #3 saw a further improvement. The shadows and tones on #2 had been quite heavily applied and in #3 she had cut them back somewhat. The result was a much lighter countenance. Looking at the two side by side, they looked as if there were marked racial differences between them.

“Ooh, looks like you’ve been too long in the sun!” she heard herself say.

But she hadn’t said anything. Bemused, she shook her head and then in her head, she put it down to spending too much time on her own in lockdown.

“You talking to me, white girl?”

Face on

Face-off #5

Claire’s structural outline for attempt #2 was good, as she’d expected. Setting out structural parameters was all part and parcel of preparing for any study. She always avoided hard lines but liked to use charcoal for the basic building blocks as it was quite ‘forgiving’. The subsequent light and shade addition went much better than attempt #1.

All in all, she was reasonably happy and set it aside for adding colour tones. A fly on the wall might think differently though. It would know what she really looked like, certainly not the face she put on specially for the mirror...

If at first...

Face-off #4

Her first attempt at a self-portrait she finished quickly; she’d always been able to draw with a kind of certainty few of us can muster or match. Not one to dwell on things, particularly her mistakes, she quickly discarded attempt #1. She hadn't ‘got’ herself she thought. Her eyes were too stern and her chin was lopsided.

She had told herself right at the start to expect a failure or two early on as she tried to master techniques largely new to her. So nothing daunted, and certainly without referring to her first attempt, she laid down outline #2.

Saving face

Face-off #3

The outline of her drawing was the vital template. It was fairly straightforward, but manipulating the light, shade and shadows was a skill she needed to develop. It was how the character of the face was awoken... far more critical than any old experiments in still life. She couldn’t think why she had avoided life drawing and particularly portraiture in the past. But she feared her confidence heretofore might suffer a terminal knock should she not master light and shade.

But who else but Claire would see now? She alone... but she alone was the expert in her own face.

Smudger

Face-off #2

With artist’s pad in hand, she set up the mirror to frame her face... then took her charcoal and confidently, with deft strokes, she mapped out the shape of her face, positions of her eyes, nose mouth and ears and the shape of her hair... this aspect she would change daily to ring the changes. Overall, she’d made a pretty good job of this portrait blueprint.

Now came the more challenging part, breathing ‘life’ onto the page, using light and shade to bring herself to life. This part was her favourite... getting her fingers charcoaly as, with glee, she smudged.

Still...

Face-off #1

It was lockdown. Time on her hands... lots of it. Always an amateur artist of still life, she was fed up with its solitude and stillness; she just wanted the life part, human to human interaction.

Claire had always eschewed technology and particularly social media and, worst of all, the current preoccupation with online ‘conferencing’ and ‘partying’. She preferred one to ones, in person.

Thus she decided that her ‘one to one’ would be herself... in the mirror. She would move on to portraits... of herself... in the mirror. Lots of them. Claire would create her own party. With herself...