What is a profile? What to keep and what to discard while drawing profile so that the sense remains? What sense to capture in a profile? These are few questions I grappled with while doing the exercise.

Cohabitants:

Before drawing I was figuring out what to profile while drawing a human being? Well, yes off course the movements and the postures. After drawing the first sketch of the person sitting with legs stretched, I felt that something was missing. Then the next sketches, I started making a distinction between the person’s attire, spectacles, shoes, hairdo, etc. This made me realise that with all such distinctions made, one could identify the person.

I realised, the identification (identifying features) of the person was important apart from proportions and posture

Performers:

While drawing a profile of a performer, I first started showing details of the person- the face cut, brow to lip distance, body proportions. Then after a certain while I realised that for a performer, the character is very important that the person themselves. Then I started paying importance to the character.

What makes the character?

The attire and jewellery, the instruments, and the movement of the performer. Hence while drawing the profile, all these were focused to show separately and distinctively even if not in detail.

Vegetation:

The identity of the tree is important

In week 3 I had figured that things which define the character of the tree are– trunk size and branching pattern, size and shape of the leaves and leaf placement pattern. But while doing the profiles, all these details had to dissolve and merge. Then what is it that will define the character?

How dense or sparce the foliage is!

The first profile I made of a tree, did not correspond to the density and hence I couldn’t identify the species of the tree anymore. However later while drawing, even if I was not intending to draw the details, I followed the same sequence of drawing as I did when I was drawing the vegetation in detail- so that even if the leaf and leafing pattern is not accurate, at least there is a suggestion of it. This helped me achieve a sense of density similar to the species of the tree.

After drawing 2-3 profiles, the size of tree in comparison with the human and the sparsity or density of the foliage in that scale seemed very important to bring the character.