The Beholder of the Eye
Article Transcript
Eyes fascinate us. Not just us, as caricature artists, but us as human beings. They are the windows to the soul, the primary tool used to flirt, where you look to tell if someone is lying, the connection point between our inner selves and the outside world; in short, there is a long, long history of people raising eyes to a very high status, far above other facial features. And this overemphasis is certainly seen in caricature — if this notion is imbedded in our psychology as human beings, we as craftspeople must examine this and either exploit it or, sometimes, compensate for it. One “trick” I was taught early in my career was to leave the pupils and irises for last, so that the drawing wasn’t “looking back at you” as you worked on it. This, I was told, helps you see the caricature as a series of shapes rather than just looking at those two finished eyes and (subconsiously or consciously) slacking off as you draw the rest of the face. Likewise, onlookers frequently cannot see the resemblance of a blank-eyed caricature until that magic moment when you fill in the eyeballs. Then, kapow! Instant recognition. People describe that step as “breathing life into the picture.” Many spectators seem only able to express their praise as “Look at the eyes! You got his eyes just right — wow, it’s all in the eyes, isn’t it?”
Well, is it? I could spend time talking about the micro muscular movements around the eyes that cue for certain emotions, or the lighting aspects for rendering the wet surface of the eye — but I am no art instructor. Caricaturing in a live setting is, to me, as much about psychology and human interaction as it is about the line work. So let’s look at some psychosocial trivia about the eyes.
Plenty of people have believed there was more to the eyes than … well, what meets the eye. In the 19th century, a German minister named Emanuel Felke pioneered “iridology,” the notion that iris tissue corresponded to systemic health. Speckles at the six-o’clock position of the iris meant kidney trouble, speckles at the nine-o’clock area meant lung issues, and so on. American chiropractor Bernard Jensen tried to popularize the pseudoscience of iridology back in the 1950s, but there has never been any clinical data to back up iridology’s claims. So, like phrenology, physiognomy, and a bunch of other fanciful health-related notions, iridology has proven really no more useful than reading your tea leaves when it comes to diagnosing a health concern. Turning from health and looking instead to personality traits, we find a field that’s piled even higher and even deeper. People with green eyes are passionate, and enjoy nature, while those with brown eyes are intelligent, reliable, and create a warm home life. Blue-eyed people are more spiritual and outgoing; they love having many friends. Well, depending on which online quiz you go to, feel free to mix and match these very generic traits, as they were in no way consistently applied from site to site. And most of the world has brown eyes — so do all of the people on one of these brown-eyed continents have the exact same personality profile? Doubtful.
Now to some real science: Eye color can tell us about the genetic background of a person, but only to a certain extent. While the simplified genetics many of us were taught in middle-school science claimed eye color resulted from a simple dominant-recessive gene interaction (leading some kids to wonder if they were adopted), we now know that it depends on at least 15 different genes. Though parents’ eye color makes for certain probabilities, for those with even a little variation in their family tree, any color is possible. For instance, two brown-eyed parents can indeed have a blue-eyed child, no mailman required. Blue eyes (and the other lighter colors) resulted from a mutation on the OCA2 gene, which essentially “turns off” the production of brown melanin pigment. Human eyes do not contain blue or green pigments. Rather, the non-brown colors are produced structurally — resulting from the interaction of light on the microscopic structure of the stroma of the iris. Similarly, peacock feathers also only contain brown pigments, but their microscopic structure makes them appear iridescent blue and green.
Genetic researchers have traced all blueeyed people back to a single ancestor with this mutation who lived near the Black Sea around 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. Before that time, all humans had brown eyes. Some speculate that the trait spread quickly because of sexual selection: blue eyes were found attractive, and so, on average, blue eyes = more action = more offspring = a higher percentage of blue-eyed folks in the population as time goes on. While it smacks of racism or at the least cultural relativism to state that any eye color is inherently “more attractive” than another, it does stand to reason that something new or rare can seem more attractive simply due to novelty. In my retail environment, dealing with customers from all over the globe, I have noticed that the people who have “blue-eye envy” are more often from places where brown eyes dominate, while the average brown-eyed person from Ireland or Sweden is quite happy with their dark eye color. And, though anecdotes are not hard data, I must say I have a dark-eyed African American friend who told me his attractiveness quotient shot through the roof when he moved to Utah, where he stood out as exotic among the mostly blond, blue-eyed population.
Now, back to the caricature chair. Iridology and personality-test bunkum aside, I have found that you can indeed gain some insight about people based on their eyes — or, specifically, how they answer the question “What color are your eyes?” Indoors, at a distance of a couple meters, it can be tricky to tell. So I ask. Over the past 22 years, I have asked thousands and thousands of people what color their eyes are, and without really meaning to, I have developed a bit of a cold-reading routine. Many people reflexively answer with “Oh they change, depending on what I’m wearing or what kind of light I’m in.” This tells me that very few people have enough knowledge of light and color to understand that that is universally true of all eyes and, indeed, any thing of any color. Our perception of color depends heavily on the surrounding colors. Some people will embark upon a long, meandering tale of how their eyes are some never-before-cataloged color and everyone they know remarks upon them and they turn an eerie shade of turquoise every full moon, or some such nonsense. This tells me that the person in front of me is sociable, maybe a bit self-involved, and grasping for something, anything, that makes them special. Some men, when asked what color eyes they have, will look confused and then turn to the woman next to them and blankly ask, “Honey?” This tells me that they have probably been married quite a while! Some teenagers or young adults will get drawn wearing obvious tinted contact lenses, but they will try to play it off like it’s their real color. This tells me they’ve got that conflicting mixture of vanity, a self-conscious desire to alter themselves, and a cocky naiveté that makes them think they are fooling people far older and wiser than they are.
Oddly enough, these traits are also what make people want to get a caricature! Someone might be getting drawn because they want an image that will help them feel unique, cool or fascinating (even if they aren’t so much). Someone else might be getting drawn simply because their wife made them sit down. And youthful vanity coupled with the desire to alter a few things about one’s appearance is probably the number-one motivator that gets folks into my chair!
But some people I ask about eye color — no, I should say a great many of them — answer with one word. A word that has come to be a longtime irritant of mine. A word I would strike from the lexicon if I had the power. It shouldn’t irk me as much as it does; it’s just one little two-syllable word, after all. But it tells me NOTHING. That word, if you haven’t guessed, is hazel. And it is not an answer, for it provides no information and means many different colors to many different people. At least when it comes to things that aren’t eyes, we realize it’s useless as a descriptor. No one says they have a hazel pickup truck or a hazel pair of shoes that matches their hazel handbag. What would that even mean?
Shakespeare is said to have coined the term in “Romeo and Juliet” (1592), where he used it to mean reddish-brown eyes that were the color of ripe hazelnuts. Since then, however, it has come to mean a wide array of colors, from gray to light blue-green to nearly dark brown. From what I have seen, driver’s licenses and military IDs do not seem to follow any particular rules about what qualifies, either. So the answer “hazel” must always be followed with “What KIND of hazel?” To this end, I have made a handy chart that you can cut out and laminate, should you wish to use it at your place of business. May it serve you well.
So, is it “all in the eyes”? Surely not. But there are a lot of interesting facets to our little ocular orbs. Work long enough in this business and you will eventually run into a subject who really does have amazing eyes. Twice now I have drawn subjects who had the extremely rare red-violet eye color that results for some with albinism. Heterochromia and chimerism produce strikingly mismatched eyeballs, and I even ran into a fellow who pulled out his old driver’s license to show me how his eyes started out dark brown and slowly faded to light greenblue (no contacts, trust me I’m good at spotting those). I did a little research and, sure enough, such a thing is possible. The melanocytes in the iris continually produce pigment, and while most people who experience an eye color change do so within the first year of life, sometimes the pigment production can gradually drop off as a result of puberty, pregnancy, illness, injury, or as a side-effect of medication. So the next time your customer starts talking about their eyes (and people do LOVE talking about their eyes), give them some interesting trivia and dispel some myths. And please, I beg you, try to get them to stop using the word “hazel.”
Celestia Ward works as half of Two Heads Studios in Las Vegas, NV, and can be found airbrushing caricatures at Planet Hollywood on the fabulous Las Vegas Strip.
This Navigation box may not show up on mobile browsers. Please see Exaggerated Features Issue 2013.3 for the full contents of this issue if the navigation box does not display.
 |
| | |
| |||
| |||
