For some time now I have been trying to develop methods of tackling the human body in origami. And just recently, having been inspired by seeing the work of Saadya Sternberg, I have started to do some work on the human face. (I have tried before, following the methods of Eric Joisel, but without much success.)
When it comes to bodies, I find that the female nude is much easier to tackle than the male nude. However, all the faces that I create turn out to be male - so far I have found female faces to be nigh-on impossible.
Has anyone else experienced this? Any theories as to why this might be?
Sex and origami
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My theory is that male faces are more angular, and since most Origami folds are very linear the results are often rather masculine. Does that make any sense?
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wolf
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I think Saj is right - there are more angles in the male face, which shows up better as hard folded forms.
I've found that the gender of a face depends quite heavily on two areas - the cheekbones and the eyebrow ridge. The positions and crease hardness of the folds defining this area make quite a big difference in the final appearance.
Male eyes are set further into the face, making the eyebrow ridge stick out. It also tends to run across the whole of the face. This is quite easily approximated by folding a horizontal pleat across the face area, and raising two areas to form the eye sockets - sort of like, if you did a Joisel-mask-eyes with one horizontal fold instead of two. Females don't have pronounced eye ridges, so it's hard to define it with one fold. I've tried using two pinch folds starting from the sides of the face; I find this works satisfactorily most of the time. Essentially, for females, having an eyebrow ridge directly above and across the nose looks odd.
Males have larger and more pronounced cheekbones, so it's relatively easy to define these with hard folds. For females, I find that making even the softest crease along the cheekbone line turns the whole face masculine, so I tend to leave it out (okay, so maybe my 'softest crease' isn't soft enough
). Related to the cheekbones is the chin - square-jawed for the ideal Greek male hero look, and pointy for more feminine features.
Hair, surprisingly, doesn't seem to make much of a difference in defining the gender of a face.
Here's a good page that talks about facial features and how to draw them:
http://mcduffies.keenspace.com/tutorface.html
A lot of the stuff they talk about is quite relevant to folding as well, as is most other drawing pages dealing with the human figure.
I've found that the gender of a face depends quite heavily on two areas - the cheekbones and the eyebrow ridge. The positions and crease hardness of the folds defining this area make quite a big difference in the final appearance.
Male eyes are set further into the face, making the eyebrow ridge stick out. It also tends to run across the whole of the face. This is quite easily approximated by folding a horizontal pleat across the face area, and raising two areas to form the eye sockets - sort of like, if you did a Joisel-mask-eyes with one horizontal fold instead of two. Females don't have pronounced eye ridges, so it's hard to define it with one fold. I've tried using two pinch folds starting from the sides of the face; I find this works satisfactorily most of the time. Essentially, for females, having an eyebrow ridge directly above and across the nose looks odd.
Males have larger and more pronounced cheekbones, so it's relatively easy to define these with hard folds. For females, I find that making even the softest crease along the cheekbone line turns the whole face masculine, so I tend to leave it out (okay, so maybe my 'softest crease' isn't soft enough
). Related to the cheekbones is the chin - square-jawed for the ideal Greek male hero look, and pointy for more feminine features.Hair, surprisingly, doesn't seem to make much of a difference in defining the gender of a face.
Here's a good page that talks about facial features and how to draw them:
http://mcduffies.keenspace.com/tutorface.html
A lot of the stuff they talk about is quite relevant to folding as well, as is most other drawing pages dealing with the human figure.
Females
Mark,
I seem to remember admiring a female torso of yours once in a BOS magazine.
Human female faces indeed present much more of a challenge to origami than males. Many is the time that after a long struggle I’ve ended up with a face that at best can be called androgynous; and then, with waverings in my mood, I’ve glumly watched it change, untouched, from female to male…
But I’ve had more success with females lately. Here is the 2004 “Kiss Meâ€
I seem to remember admiring a female torso of yours once in a BOS magazine.
Human female faces indeed present much more of a challenge to origami than males. Many is the time that after a long struggle I’ve ended up with a face that at best can be called androgynous; and then, with waverings in my mood, I’ve glumly watched it change, untouched, from female to male…
But I’ve had more success with females lately. Here is the 2004 “Kiss Meâ€
Last edited by saadya on December 31st, 2005, 9:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
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mleonard
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Hi Saadya. Welcome to the forum!
In case I didn't make it clear in my first post, I am a huge admirer of your work. I would be quite happy to hear your long physiognomic explanations...
I've realised that there is another problem here: I don't just want to make a woman's face, I want to make a beautiful woman's face. All the faces I have made so far have been rather ugly, which for male faces isn't a problem. But making an ugly woman seems a bit pointless - unless you were trying to make some deep artistic point about, um, something or other.
Is it just me, or do the two pieces above border on the pornographic? Not that I think that's a bad thing, you understand.
Here's my latest take on the female nude - I came up with this just a few days ago. (I actually quite like the face on this one!)
[img]http://www.the-flipside.co.uk/forum/upl ... 370103.jpg[/img]
Cubist Figure
In case I didn't make it clear in my first post, I am a huge admirer of your work. I would be quite happy to hear your long physiognomic explanations...
I've realised that there is another problem here: I don't just want to make a woman's face, I want to make a beautiful woman's face. All the faces I have made so far have been rather ugly, which for male faces isn't a problem. But making an ugly woman seems a bit pointless - unless you were trying to make some deep artistic point about, um, something or other.
Is it just me, or do the two pieces above border on the pornographic? Not that I think that's a bad thing, you understand.
Here's my latest take on the female nude - I came up with this just a few days ago. (I actually quite like the face on this one!)
[img]http://www.the-flipside.co.uk/forum/upl ... 370103.jpg[/img]
Cubist Figure
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wolf
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Hmm, a difficult question here - what would you consider to be a beautiful woman's face? I'm sure there's people who think that Britney Spears is beautiful.mleonard wrote:I've realised that there is another problem here: I don't just want to make a woman's face, I want to make a beautiful woman's face.
Are there any existing works (eg Joisel's or Pidel's masks) that you think has captured the essence of female beauty? Maybe we can dissect that to see how the designers have achieved it.
Just you.mleonard wrote:Is it just me, or do the two pieces above border on the pornographic?
Do you have some pictures of his models? I would really like to see.bshuval wrote:Eric Kenneway has some fantastic female faces (and figures)
I would also be interested to read that.saadya wrote:I don’t want to bore everyone here with long physiognomic explanations…
mleonard: I like your model
faces
mleonard
re: Sculpture
Nicely done. What I specially like is its asymmetry---symmetry being something origami has a hard time getting away from.
Taken to its limit – which for some reason we in origami often are reluctant to do – this sort of work would not be ‘mock cubism’ but ACTUAL cubism.
There was one cubist sculptor, in particular, who persistently explored the interplay between the ‘language of flatness’ and the ‘language of fullness’ (sculptures that incorporate drawn and bas-relief motifs; paintings where elements project out into sculpture; bas-relief that turns into high-relief, etc.). He is Archipenko. But being a Real Cubist, a lot of his work is about shattering of forms--into projectiles of cones & other geometric solids. Origami which by definition is about continuity, contiguity, will necessarily look a little different whenever (cubist or not) it does turn into a high art.
--------
Bshuval’s post quite usefully allows a rephrasing of the question of this thread: Why is making female faces relatively easy in flat origami, and relatively easy in mask-work, but not relatively easy in sculptural origami?
re: Sculpture
Nicely done. What I specially like is its asymmetry---symmetry being something origami has a hard time getting away from.
Taken to its limit – which for some reason we in origami often are reluctant to do – this sort of work would not be ‘mock cubism’ but ACTUAL cubism.
There was one cubist sculptor, in particular, who persistently explored the interplay between the ‘language of flatness’ and the ‘language of fullness’ (sculptures that incorporate drawn and bas-relief motifs; paintings where elements project out into sculpture; bas-relief that turns into high-relief, etc.). He is Archipenko. But being a Real Cubist, a lot of his work is about shattering of forms--into projectiles of cones & other geometric solids. Origami which by definition is about continuity, contiguity, will necessarily look a little different whenever (cubist or not) it does turn into a high art.
--------
Bshuval’s post quite usefully allows a rephrasing of the question of this thread: Why is making female faces relatively easy in flat origami, and relatively easy in mask-work, but not relatively easy in sculptural origami?
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mleonard
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Wolf: OK, scratch the word "beautiful" and insert the word "young". A philosophical discussion of what constitutes feminine beauty isn't going to get us anywhere. But if I could make a young woman, I think I would be able to make her beautiful.
I suppose the closest thing to what I want among the works of Annie Pidel would be "Francois" - although she does appear to have a beard...
Link
Saadya: Thanks for your kind words. I don't know whether this is "real" cubism or not, but it was certainly inspired by cubism - specifically by an exhibition of Czech cubists that I saw in Prague recently. However it was inspired by the paintings, rather than by the sculptures, which in that particular exhibition were a bit underwhelming.
I have only just come across the work of Archipenko - interesting stuff. I am slowly working my way through the history of modernist sculpture - I have been through my Barbara Hepworth phase, and then I had a brief flirtation with Brancusi (which was ultimately unproductive). Who was it that said "good artists borrow, great artists steal"? I've been trying to steal from everybody...
I remember seeing the work of Eric Kenneway years ago, when I first started folding - I don't think I appreciated it properly then. I think it's time that I went back and looked at it again.
I suppose the closest thing to what I want among the works of Annie Pidel would be "Francois" - although she does appear to have a beard...
Link
Saadya: Thanks for your kind words. I don't know whether this is "real" cubism or not, but it was certainly inspired by cubism - specifically by an exhibition of Czech cubists that I saw in Prague recently. However it was inspired by the paintings, rather than by the sculptures, which in that particular exhibition were a bit underwhelming.
I have only just come across the work of Archipenko - interesting stuff. I am slowly working my way through the history of modernist sculpture - I have been through my Barbara Hepworth phase, and then I had a brief flirtation with Brancusi (which was ultimately unproductive). Who was it that said "good artists borrow, great artists steal"? I've been trying to steal from everybody...
I remember seeing the work of Eric Kenneway years ago, when I first started folding - I don't think I appreciated it properly then. I think it's time that I went back and looked at it again.
Saadya asked:
In mask-work color goes to a great extent in helping with this. The flat origami of Eric Kenneway was never about the face alone. It also included the very important feature of hair (usually), and a body (sometimes). In one of the earlier BOS magazines (I don't have them next to me at the moment, so I can't tell you which one) there is a beautiful girl's face by Kenneway. It is quite simple, yet obviously a girl. The reason for this is that the has hair. The face in itself is not too distinctive. But the hair makes it clear.
The problem with most sculptural origami faces is that they do not usually have an attached body, and do not really have female-like hair. I think that hair is very difficult to convey in paper.
Basically, my point is that with origami we simplify and omit many details that would otherwise be present. Most of us can immediately tell whether a photograph of a face is that of a male or a female (except for rare cases). But there we have a mass of added information. Not only are there facial features, but there are tones/colors, facial hair, various signs of aging, and more. In origami we strip all of those and are left, usually, with outlines and suggestive details.
This simplification of origami makes it more difficult for us to distinguish between male and female sculptural origami. It is relatively easy to add features that suggest male-ness, such as a broader chin, or short hair, a beard, etc. Gentle features that suggest female-ness, I guess, are harder to implement.
Perhaps you could try folding a figure with long flowing hair and see where that leads you.
Just some thoughts I wanted to bounce off you. Do you agree, or do you think what I am saying is rubbish? I'd be interested to know.
I think that when you take a face and strip it from other connected elements (e.g. hair, body), it is difficult to distinguish whether it is a male or a female face.Why is making female faces relatively easy in flat origami, and relatively easy in mask-work, but not relatively easy in sculptural origami?
In mask-work color goes to a great extent in helping with this. The flat origami of Eric Kenneway was never about the face alone. It also included the very important feature of hair (usually), and a body (sometimes). In one of the earlier BOS magazines (I don't have them next to me at the moment, so I can't tell you which one) there is a beautiful girl's face by Kenneway. It is quite simple, yet obviously a girl. The reason for this is that the has hair. The face in itself is not too distinctive. But the hair makes it clear.
The problem with most sculptural origami faces is that they do not usually have an attached body, and do not really have female-like hair. I think that hair is very difficult to convey in paper.
Basically, my point is that with origami we simplify and omit many details that would otherwise be present. Most of us can immediately tell whether a photograph of a face is that of a male or a female (except for rare cases). But there we have a mass of added information. Not only are there facial features, but there are tones/colors, facial hair, various signs of aging, and more. In origami we strip all of those and are left, usually, with outlines and suggestive details.
This simplification of origami makes it more difficult for us to distinguish between male and female sculptural origami. It is relatively easy to add features that suggest male-ness, such as a broader chin, or short hair, a beard, etc. Gentle features that suggest female-ness, I guess, are harder to implement.
Perhaps you could try folding a figure with long flowing hair and see where that leads you.
Just some thoughts I wanted to bounce off you. Do you agree, or do you think what I am saying is rubbish? I'd be interested to know.
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wolf
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I wonder how much of this is due to differences between male and female perception? "Francois" looked androgynous to me; actually, a large majority of them appear this way to me.mleonard wrote:I suppose the closest thing to what I want among the works of Annie Pidel would be "Francois" - although she does appear to have a beard...
Another interesting point would be the paper texture. "Young and female" usually implies no wrinkles and smooth skin. So perhaps the gender of a face is already partly fixed by the paper you start with!