Dear Self-Portrait

Dear Self-Portrait,

I attempted my first you today, with pretty good results. However, drawing my you taught me a lot, and I would like to share them with you.

First and foremost - making a you is HARD. REALLY hard. The primary reason being that I am quite familiar with my own face (or at least the MIRROR IMAGE of my face). At first look, of course, that should seem helpful. As in it should be easier for me to draw something that I am more familiar with as opposed to something I am not. That hypothesis, however, is quite wrong. The reason being that - since I'm so familiar with my face - if even one little detail is a bit off, it makes the whole drawing look off, as well. It's one thing to draw a model who I have never seen before and to feel good about my rendering of her face - it's a whole other thing to be satisfied with a drawing of my OWN face. Had I not forced myself to stop, I could have spent the rest of my years endlessly tidying up and re-doing portions of my face to try to get it EXACTLY right . . . which may even be impossible.

Another thing that makes you so difficult is that I'm no model, and it's difficult to draw from a mirror. A model just sits still and lets me bend over my paper and draw and look up and draw, etc. until I am satisfied. My mirror image, on the other hand, is not so patient. Every time I look down at my paper, so does my image. Any time I lean over to get really close to do some detail work, my model completely changes his pose, and I must re-arrange myself appropriately every time I look up. It's like trying to write a memoir while hallucinating - everything is constantly changing, and it's near impossible to remember how things were just a minute before. So the challenge is to actually rely LESS on my subject (me in the mirror) and more on basic drawing skills and knowledge to make it look right - kind of like making up the dialogue to get the point across because you don't actually remember the exact conversation. Not so easy. Especially when I am already being so nit-picky about my familiar face.

From this experience making my you, I have a whole new appreciation for Van Gogh and all the rest of the you-ists out there. They have the advantage, however, of being dead and having their only images of themselves being their yous, so I can't really critique them and say if they were accurate or not. Since I have never met Van Gogh or seen a photograph of him, he could have looked NOTHING like his yous, and I would never know. I somehow doubt it, but still. Either way, I respect their ability to continue to tackle the difficult task of making yous, in spite of the challenges and frustrations.

All that being said, I am pretty satisfied with the results at my first attempt at you-ture. I don't think anybody looking at my drawing (that knows me, at least) would have any trouble figuring out that it is supposed to be me. They might even find it a pretty good likeness. Of course, the mirror-image aspect of the you would likely throw them for a loop, but what can an artist do? Not bad for a first try.

After that, I can foresee your following question, Self-Portrait: so then why didn't I scan the image and send it in with this letter? Good question. I have two reasons for not having done so. The most important reason is self-preservation. As my Reader has probably noticed by now, I have yet to reference my own real name or given any identifying characteristics in any of these letters. Why? Simply because I don't feel like having somebody that knows me - who I don't want reading this - to be able to find this and attribute it to me. What if I end up insulting a future employer or co-worker? More importantly, what if one of my students was to find this? As of now, it's actually relatively appropriate, but you never know what I may feel like writing about . . .

The other reason is simple shyness. Although I'm proud of my work, I don't particularly feel like being judged/critiqued on this one. 'But,' you say, 'Nobody has EVER commented on ANY of your drawings so far!' That may be true, but even silent judgement is not wanted on this one.

And that's that.

And so I present a famous you of Vincent van Gogh, instead. Not a bad trade-off. Besides, with him dead, gone, and un-photographed, he doesn't have to worry about any of those things.

So thank you, Self-Portrait, for the enlightening times. Since I purchased a mirror yesterday for precisely the purpose of practicing drawing yous, I imagine we should be hanging out again soon. Until then, see what you can do about that inconsistent mirror-modeling thing . . .

Left Side on the Right,
CVT