Faces process
Thirty seconds in which one head is built from a flat black silhouette to a finished portrait. The other two arrive only after that.
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The written description covers the same ground.
What the film shows
A silent time-lapse, thirty seconds. It opens on the finished picture, then cuts back and starts again from a flat black silhouette of a single head on a blue-grey ground. The ground turns light grey and the silhouette stays solid black for a long stretch while the shape of the skull and the hair are settled. The first features are two pale marks for the eyes, then the nose and mouth. Modelling comes in slowly and warm colour arrives late, until around two thirds through one complete head stands alone on the left. The other two heads then appear beside it already close to finished, and all three are refined together. In the last seconds the grey ground turns cream and the signature is added.
Most of this film is one head. The other two arrive in the last third and are finished quickly, which shows where the work actually was: getting the first one right.
The silhouette holds for nearly half the film with no features at all, so the shape of the head and the hair are settled as pure mass before a single eye goes in. It is the same greyscale-first habit as the paintings, pushed further. Here the picture is a flat black shape for longer than it is a face.
What it produced
The work →
Faces