Mouse speak 05

Some pictures i found on loadtr (see Mouse speak 04) could be categorized as portraits. Portraits are always interesting and they contain different possibilities. I chose three portraits to deal with the three most important features of the face: the mouth, the eyes and the nose. There are two pictures of women and a man’s portrait. The two women are models and clearly meant to be sexy soft porn. The funny thing about this kind of soft porn is that the real beauty of women is usually hidden, not apparent or just not there.

 

Reworking of this picture. Click to enlarge. Copyright Villa La Repubblica 2010.

I chose this picture because it is quite colourful and the lips of the girl are the most attractive part of her face. The rest of the picture are blonde hair, tits and a narrow waist. One could use all kinds of strategies and techniques to comment on this picture, to make it more or less pornographic, to make it satirical or disturbing, or what ever. I chose a “cooler” strategy. Apart from the lips i didn’t find the face very interesting. So i used that as a starting point and i found quite a simple solution using shape and colours of the picture.

 

Reworking of this picture. Click to enlarge. Copyright Villa La Repubblica 2010.

This picture is typical soft porn. The girl looks both inviting and defiant. There is a certain order in her pose and her outfit that needs to be broken. I didn’t try that. Doing so would be quite easy and gratuitous and the result would be uninteresting. I chose her for her eye for obvious reasons. But the defiance of her posture and the bleakish colours were a good reason too. So starting point was her eye and further on i followed the Venus de Milo procedure. The back ground colour chose itself.

Reworking of this picture. Click to enlarge. Copyright 2010.

This male portrait is clearly not soft porn, sexy though it may be. I don’t know who the guy is. Probably a sportsman or some anonymous feller. Point is i needed a face with a nose. The nose of this gentleman doesn’t seem to be very prominent, but it is certainly a beacon in a rather square face. It is the squareness (in more meanings of that word) of the face that struck me in the first place. So i used that as a starting point. Being vaguely worried of being not very original i found out John Baldessari also made some works leaving the nose open the same way, as you can see here and here.

BP