Wrinkles, Crinkles, Fault Lines and Fabric: Good ways for thinking about signs of age

And thus the day was Friday! And henceforth was there ever a post every Friday. Yea. Merrily.



See some simlarities up there? Maybe? A little?

So here's a thought I had a while back (as in, when bloody blogger is going to say I made this post. Silly computer). Check out these three pictures. Lots of crinkles and wrinkles. I've revised my definitions of those two terms in the past few weeks. I've used them interchangeably up until now, but I'm confusing myself.

Henceforth, "crinkles" are impermanent folds and "wrinkles" are the cracks and crevices that happen to skin that crinkles a lot. With age or just genetic um... there are scientific words to put here. It's like fetuses know they're going to want to bend their fingers a lot so they make wrinkles right from the get go.



I think about skin like fabric and stone a lot. I was thinking back on some things I've learned about geology and sewing and I thought "well gee, if we've taken it this far, maybe I can stretch that analogy even further." Funny thing is that it totally worked, and it's totally useful.

Things I used fabric-y thoughts for:

The folds around the knees, the fingers and toes, and the 20-something male under-neck poof (It's adorable ps). You know, foldy things.


Also, cheeks and forehead crinkles. Gathery things.


Fabric-y thoughts I didn't think to think:

What happens when you forget to do laundry and have to wear that size-five-years-ago t-shirt to work? I mean, after the blood sweat and tears that goes into folding your shoulders down enough to get your arms into the sleeves. You start seeing these crinkles running parallel to the direction of the tension. When there's not enough skin to cover your insides or enough satin to cover your secret pre-nuptial tummy bulge you get these parallel crinkles.


I wish I had a better reference of what's happening to the skin at a smaller lever there. All the little lines are stretching out the same way.

Fabric is good for thinking about crinkles, because it makes hills and valleys and folds. Remember, an active and impermanent crinkle is more roundy than a wrinkle.



I used rocky thoughts for:

Wrinkles of the long and canyonish kind. I like thinking of them as larger than they are because it reminds me to shade them properly.
And also small texture-y wrinkles of the tediousish kind. The kind you see on the back of one's hand remind me a lot of rock.



Faulty thoughts that I didn't think to think:

So the cool part is when you start thinking of these lines and wrinkles and breaks in the skin in terms of the motion of force. Just like they do with fault lines.



Compression is the folding and gathering of fabric, while tension is the same motion that causes the tiny-shirt/yelling wrinkles.

But in geology land, they also talk about shearing.



Shearing makes up for those magical wrinkles the happen when the poofier parts of the face start falling down. The deepening of the nasal fold (that dark fold that happens when you smile or sneer or cry) as one ages is mostly caused by a shearing action between the cheeks and the mouth area. Actually, I'm not going to say mostly just yet. It's probably different on different people. I'll get back to you on that.

I have to go draw some one now. So: THE END.

On Wrinkles

This picture this is cut from is a little messed up. In my defense, my reference was a mess. It's Tom. Oh course. He's smiling. He's twenty-eight now. He's getting little crinkles every where. I can honestly only make educated guesses as to where they are exactly, not having seen him up close with my own eyes.

Wrinkles happen where skin is repeated stressed. So when you look at this picture of Tom's eyes all crinkling up, you can kind of tell where the wrinkles are going to happen. Under the eyebags and down the cheeks.

Yesterday I was looking at my boyfriend's face and there was this crazy fucking eye crinkle running parallel to the pull of the zygomatic major (the smiling muscle).

Shown in figure 7: Not my boyfriend.
So, kind of right across that red line there.

Kinda like this. Except that I can't draw him from memory yet, so this is just a kinda generic eye... Actually, he is pretty generic. Enough of that. That's not the point.
The direction of the wrinkles and crinkles I would expect are marked in red. They make sense. Like gathering fabric, it's obvious the skin would fold there every time he smiled, or squinted or poofed his cheeks out. (The ones right under the eye make sense too. That's the squinting muscle action.) But why in the name of all things Pretty would there be a wrinkle running across the cheek like that?

I stared at him for literally a half an hour before I glanced at my hands and realized how obvious it was.



I forgot, there are two kinds of wrinkles. I call them folded and stretched wrinkles in my head. Because one, (A) happens by being squished all the time. Either by something like the bending of a finger, or the gathering of a smiling cheek. The skin folds in on itself. (B) The other happens because the skin gets stretched by some action. The cheeks ball up when one smiles, they have to stretch horizontally. So when that muscle action stops, the skin falls in on itself. It's like the reverse of the first kind. When the skin isn't being pulled out tight, and stretched, it falls in on itself. Like trying to put a king sized bedspread on a queen sized matress, yeah? There's extra material. And then a really big guy sleeps on it, and all the extra fabric gets pressed into permanent wrinkles. Or like the big guy himself. He's got some spare gut, and it folds into itself. See?

I have a theory that there might be a difference in shape and line quality between these two types. It certainly looks that way from looking at my knuckles (I left the photo all huge like so you can examine that if you like). But hand crinkles are there from birth, so that might be kind of different. I'm not sure.

If that is the case, the implications would be fantastic. It would mean having the ability to look at the different kind of wrinkles on a face and determine with far more accuracy, how and where it moves. Wow. That would be like Christmas in July good. Hopefully I can figure that one out.

I need to get a pair of dark glasses or something so I can stare at people without them seeing. ;)