Noses and Chins

I’ve been doing a fantastic job of keeping my goal to complete one sketch per day. As a matter of fact, it’s about the only goal I’ve kept up on consistently – except the goal I’ve already completed. My submission to the Utah State Poetry Society’s annual competition went into the mail last Saturday. I had a goal to submit 15 poems, and I wound up with 18 ready for submission. Not sure how good the poems are compared to the competition, but I do know they’re some of the best I’ve ever written – and it’s about darn time I felt good about some of these ones, too.

Anyway, I meant to talk a bit about drawing, not writing. I’ve spent a lot of time nowadays looking at the human body – the straight lines of the arms and torso, the knotted curves of the fingers and toes, and all the tiny crevices of the face. It’s been one of the most fantastic experiences of my life – completely changed the way I look at physical beauty. I’ve also gotten to stare at women without feeling like a complete pervert… most of the time.

I’ve come to find two specific shapes on the human body to be the most fascinating and the most captivating. And I’ll bet they’re not the ones you’re thinking of. You sicko.

The first is the nose. I’ve kinda decided that I love noses – weird, because I used to think noses were ugly and got in the way… of… things… *ahem*

The nose is a fascinating lump of flesh. The shape of it does more, it seems to me, to determine the character of a face than any other feature. They can curve up like the tip of an elf’s shoe, or spread out into the cheeks. They can have a bit of a valley on the end like the dimples of a chin. Even the gap where the nostrils are is just an amazing shape – although I think I’ll just stick to drawing the shape. I don’t need to go probing in there.

Yeah, that was a nose-picking joke. I’m a real class act.

The jaw and chin are equally remarkable. I mean, we’ve all kind of gotten the idea that a sharp jaw is an attractive feature. I’m convinced that Gabrielle Anwar, the woman who plays Fiona on Burn Notice (and is one of Maxim’s 100 Hottest Women or something) is so attractive in large part to the razor-sharp edge of her jaw.

But I’m actually referring to the underside of the jaw and the chin. You very rarely get a glimpse of it in normal circumstances – pretty much just when someone tilts their head to the side, usually when thinking and staring off into space. When it’s well-defined, it makes an almost perfect geometric triangle, and you can see the jaw curve from one ear, around the neck, and just start to work towards the other ear before it disappears.

I don’t know what it is about this particular part of the body that I find so enthralling. It’s not one of those “naughty bits,” but it’s still got a sense of privacy, almost sacredness, about it, because it’s usually out of sight. There’s a bit of fragility evident in the jaw’s proximity to the neck highlight one of the weakest parts of the human body, but that frail form is also a symbol of great strength and determination. I mean, the world of storytelling’s full of “square-jawed” heroes who “set their jaws” when making decisions.

Oh, and Samson killed a lion with a jawbone… or something like that.

I don’t know if I’m the first person to idolize the jaw-neck expanse of the body. I’m not even sure what to call that area. All I know, especially after reading that last paragraph, is that I need to write a poem about it. It’ll fill at least another half hour of writing. And I’ve been doing kind of terrible at that goal.