The art of the selfie

Last week, I listened to a CBC Ideas series on Rembrandt in Amsterdam. It's a good radio doc, well worth listening to if you have the slightest interest in visual art: partly a walking tour of Amsterdam, partly a talking-head piece with local (to Amsterdam) and international art experts. 

One of the things discussed at some length was Rembrandt's lifelong habit of making self-portraits. Which got me thinking. They tried to insist that the self-portrait drawings in particular were the selfies of their day. I'm not buying it. A defining characteristic of the modern selfie is the carelessness with which it's made.  One gets the impression Rembrandt was never careless about anything.

In any case, after some delay, I decided today - which was forecast to be wet and cold - was the day to stay indoors and try my hand at Rembrandt's game. In fact, the sun shone most of the day, so I had to interrupt my labours to go for a walk this afternoon. Still, I did make some self portraits, none terrifically successful.

It seems I have much to learn about the genre. Just the simple business of lighting the picture properly turned out to be difficult. I used window light and a reflector - a three-foot wide circle of shiny white fabric - to bounce window light on to the dark side of my face. Theoretically. The best light was too direct and unvarying, and forced me to sit on an uncomfortable chair. I look pained and uncomfortable in those pictures.

In most of the rest, where I'm sitting more comfortably, relaxed, I tend to look as if I amuse myself immensely or am immensely pleased with myself. I can assure you I do not and am not.

One of the things talked about in the Rembrandt doc was how he used self-portraiture to practice drawing facial expressions that he would later need to depict in paintings. Here's the example most often cited.

Anything Rembrandt can do, I can do...well, not quite as well. These were from my last set-up of the day, with the best light.

So, clearly, there is much to the learn, and it's back to the drawing board - so to speak.

There will be nothing I can do about the face, however. It is what it is. The skin looks like leather, everything droops, especially the eyes. But not, I'm just noticing, the eyebrows. I am now a septuagenarian, soon to be 71. 

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It felt bitterly cold on both my forays outside today: once in the morning to run and then for a 40 minute walk over into Harris Park this afternoon. It felt colder at -2C than it has other days when the mercury was lower. It's the wind, of course. It was cutting today, and I can still hear it moaning out there.

When in doubt, or lacking in inspiration, I either take pictures of buildings or pictures of trees. Both stay fairly still and neither is apt to complain about how long I'm taking to set up the shot. Today it was trees.