Yesterday’s edited sequence of photos I took on a walk with Mike captured him in an upset state. I took him on a walk from his group home and I think that he was fearful or anxious at being in unfamiliar territory. Mike is autistic, low functioning and nonverbal.

I developed a series of drawings and paintings from an old photographs of Mike and Mom (Portrait, Mike and Mom, Abstract Portrait Mike and Mom, Mike – Close Up, Continuing to Abstract, Dividing Shadow, Focusing In). The first entry in the series is realistic, subsequent compositions are progressively more abstract until I represent the feelings in the photo with just a few lines.

This was difficult to do in today’s picture. Mike was crying. His face was not static.

My pencil drawing captures some of the dynamics:

Abstracting this sketch to a few lines was difficult. Here are my practice sketches:

(The ‘tear’ below Mike’s eye in the lower middle sketch is where my pen dripped a blot of ink. It bled through to the next page, which I incorporated into a second line sketch.)  In most of these line drawings, it is hard to determine if Mike is crying or laughing.

Below is my final line drawing, intended to show the dynamics of Mike’s upset with just a few lines.

The expression is still ambiguous.