The Afghan Girl

Sharbat Gula is her name unbeknownst to the public who adored her from a 1985 National Geographic cover until 2002 when a team went to the Middle East in search for her. Before, she was a myth and in her eyes many saw the plea of child refugees. Recently, she was greeted back to Afghanistan with open arms by president Ghani as she was getting deported from Pakistan where she and her family lived illegally. As a symbol of her country she was offered a token apartment upon her return while many others like her continue to live in a precarious situation amid the refugee crisis.

She has been called the Mona Lisa of the modern world and I don’t believe there is a more recognizable image of National Geographic magazine to this day. When I was in high school, we were working with gouache and a selection of this prestigious magazine was available. I snatched her in an instant. Unfortunately no copy of my teenage work survived. I thought it would be cool to conceive of a project based on her in all three of my art classes for adults.

I made many demos of her last week to help my students take this undertaking step by step. This is one of them. I instructed them to start with the larger context: shape of the face, hair, scarf and then to get into the facial features starting with the top of the bridge of the nose. By giving the nose a subtle slant, you can work a convincing 3/4 view. I also wanted to tackle shadows with shapes that they can refine later. There are mistakes here but keep in mind that it was made very quickly and that I am talking to my group as I am working.

This is actually one of my one on one demo. After I was done, my student simply kept going on my drawing. That’s a clever one. The result is a pure collaboration.

I was also very hands on with this one, you can see how I took her right eye in from the outside. Many students gave her eyes that were too wide and not high enough thus loosing the innocence of rounder eyes.

That one is giving me a biblical vibe.

Her left eye is a bit too big but otherwise not bad at all. It’s very soft.

This one captured the intensity alright. It’s a small drawing. She was a drop in and only brought an HB pencil which explains a low contrast result. I don’t typically encourage low contrast but sometimes it works out great.

This one has a round face and the shading is very subtle reminding me of a renaissance maiden.

I find that providing both black and white as well as colour copies really helps the artist understand the information on the picture. Hope that you feel inspired to your favourite artistic endeavours right about now.
Take care!