Charmaine Ortiz: Search: "How To Draw a Woman", Male Perspectives from YouTube Result Pages 1-50

Drawing is my means of revealing, understanding and coping with the physical, social and political structures in the world around me. As form of imaging, the process of drawing is capable of recording and reflecting the human psyche from individual-personal to broader attributes of thought. This video is an extension of my drawing practice, it explores social disconnects between male the female via projections on a worldwide audience through social media (YouTube). Created by a man for a man? What makes a woman, what makes her attractive, what makes her lovable?

Search: “How To Draw a Woman” is a collection of YouTube videos compiled from male authors who describe the techniques and attributes necessary for portraying a woman. The result pages 1-50 reveal that “to draw a woman” not only consists of understanding an overall bodily form, but the successful capture of specific feminine aspects: smooth face, flowing hair, delicate hands, sexy eyes, etc. The male perspectives create varied views on the differing mechanisms of anatomy while noting aspects of beauty and physical flaw. Their tutorial voices are revealing since many of them are creating their women from memory, making their drawings appear as psychological mirrors of themselves. Interestingly as they create their images they openly give instructions to an outsider (the viewer) on how they too can create a similar view. In this regard, YouTube not only allows these men to project and broadcast themselves (unconscious fears and desires) but it also projects back onto the spectator notions of gender, beauty, and fantasy.

-Charmaine Ortiz

BIO:
Charmaine Ortiz is a visual artist based out of Carolina Beach, North Carolina. Her work is rooted in her love for history and by her need to connect with her father, who as a civil engineer drew with graphite until the digital era. She received the Combined Honors Fellowship earning her MFA in Painting and an MA in Art History from Savannah College of Art and Design. She has earned other merit awards including SCAD’s Thesis Encore Award as well as grants and fellowships from the Scottish Sculpture Workshop, the Contemporary Art Center at Woodside, the Vermont Studio Center, and No Boundaries International Art Colony. She has exhibited her work both nationally and internationally and has also presented her art historical research at universities across North Carolina and Georgia. Her work was most recently featured in a Dick Blick product video and in volume seventeen of Studio Visit Magazine.