ACTORS AS ART SCHOOL MODELS

Haw! I'm just kidding with the picture above, but it does serve to make my point...that female models dominate art school classes, and not just for the obvious reason. 

Female silhouettes follow lyrical, curved lines that begin at the head and follow through to the feet. They're beautiful, no doubt about it. 

Men, on the other hand, are lumpy. The parts just don't fit together.  Let's face it, realistic men are not as fun to draw as realistic women.

If more evidence is needed I refer you to the comparison above.

Now don't get me wrong. Art and artists need men. If you could boil all of art down to just one principal it would be the combination of force and grace in the same object or situation. We men are half that combination so we have an earned place at the table. Even so, the problem remains....how do we make men more fun to draw?

My own solution is acting. I picture gifted amateur actor-models working in twos, one male and one female. A story outline dominates the session.

It could be a comedy...

..or a drama.

Or some combination of the two.

A script is okay, but I picture improvised situations based on a loose outline, spoken dialogue only if it feels right. A whole story or fragments of different stories. The important thing is that whatever fragments are used,  they should lend themselves to visuals that are fun to act and fun to draw.

It would be fun to alternate comedy with drama, or solos with match-ups. I could see a male actor doing a solo variation a bit like Chris Crocker's "Leave Britany Alone!" Of course you'd have to change the timing to freeze some of the poses and give the class time to draw.

I could see a solo woman doing a sketch like Bette Davis's "I wipe my mouth" from "Of Human Bondage."

Probably the sessions I described would work best with draped models. I'm not sure amateurs could act with their clothes off. That's no problem because I'm not trying to replace classical nude model drawing with these actor sessions. Students need both.

Is that all? Mmmm...no, wait a minute, I forgot something: a good homework assignment for a session like this one is to have the students draw up one or two carefully finished drawings based on the sketches done in class.

I'm a cartoonist so I see this assignment done in a cartoon style like the one above.

  Lots of styles would work.

BTW: that's not my drawing above. I wish I'd copied down the artist's name.

ACTORS: HOW TO FIND YOUR SCREEN PERSONNA

Here it is (above), "The Beast." How many actors have come to grief because they sought roles that fit their real personalities, rather than their potential cinematic ones? The truth is that The Beast doesn't care what roles you play or would like to play. It arbitrarily accepts you in some roles and not in others. Or maybe it doesn't accept you at all. It's scary!

As an example, here's me in a YouTube spoof on Match.com. Fast forward to the two minute mark where I play a seedy gigolo, turning around to face the camera. I play a lot of characters in this film, but that's the one that seems to come off the best. It's odd because in real life I'm the opposite of a seedy gigolo. I only discovered that I was passable at it because I tried a bunch of random things in front of the camera that day, and that was one of the few the camera would accept...that and an old lady, another unlikely pick. You could say that the camera decided what I'd do, not me.

 In my opinion beginning film actors should film and photograph themselves constantly, then comb through the footage for what may be the few seconds that actually work. If the camera likes you,  if only for a short time, then that's a clue as to what the camera will accept from you, and you can build on that.