From Wikipedia: “An Instagram face is a social trend for women to adjust their features to conform to a single template, either by applying filters to their photographs on social media, or via cosmetic surgery.”

The article continues: “The template face is young, with flawless, unwrinkled skin and plump, high cheekbones. It has catlike (uplifted) eyes and long lashes; it has a small, symmetrical nose and lush lips. It has a blank expression. The face is unambiguously racially white, but of ambiguous ethnicity. The face has been described as ‘well-tanned, with South Asian brows and eye shape, African-American lips, Caucasian nose, and Native American/Middle Eastern cheeks.

I got interested in this topic after watching the Youtuber Khadija Mbowe’s video on the socio-cultural phenomenon, which in turn cited a New Yorker article by Jia Tolentino. I was fired up by the thought that people sharing and liking photos of each other could cause a real-world change in the structure of the human face. This does sound blown out of proportion until you make a quick google search and find out that Instagram users add up to a very sizeable portion of the world population, itself adding up to a kind of standard-setting, world beauty forum.

I really took my time planning this piece out because of how complex the perspective and structure of the concept was. In a way, setting the time of day of the piece to sunset meant that I didn’t need to get bogged down in detail, and could instead use the surface features of the scaffolding to pick up the highlights and add realism this way.

I first made a sketch on A4, then A3, then realised I was better off making a full, comprehensive draft on large, layered sheets of plant-based paper. This way I was really able to solve all the problems that could’ve arisen before I even started painting in earnest. I picked this technique up from the amazing James Gurney in his book on how to paint what doesn’t exist.

This was also the first time I successfully used MidJourney to help my workflow, using it to generate hundreds of images of women’s faces in search of one that would fit the angle of the piece.