FLAT OUT: Search: “How To Draw a Woman,”
Male Perspectives from YouTube Result Pages 1-50
Charmaine Ortiz

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 (their unconscious fears and desires) but it also projects back onto the spectator notions of gender, beauty, and fantasy.

About the Artist
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 additional 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, as well as 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.

charmaineortiz.com

FLAT OUT is a bi-weekly rotating video series curated by Nicole Bebout. For the series, new works by emerging and experimental artists from across the globe are displayed on a LCD screen mounted at the entrance of AC Institute.