A #dailysketchext from back in the day. This lovely woman was and is beautiful, but she was and is truly intimidated by being really looked at and being really captured in a sketch or a photograph (hence, the look she is giving -- and she moved around quite a bit when I was sketching to sabotage me -- all this even though she had consented to be sketched). This was such a weird concept to me when I met her because I had never met anyone like that (hey, I grew up in Los Angeles). Can anyone else identify with this? I want to know what this is all about.
I sincerely asked this question of my friends, and this is what some of them had to say:
A friend of mine from Denmark said, "Yes and no... always eager to have my picture taken, but feel extremely uncomfortable and self conscious when someone does..."
Another friend of mine who is originally from the Netherlands said, "Yup, reckognize[sic] that. There's something really unsettling about being studied and looked at. Maybe she didn't anticipate that when she accepted? Or maybe if she was uncomfortable, she might have sat in a unnatural position, got stiff and had to move? Anyways, you definitely captured her eyes and look 👍👍"
To which I responded: "hee hee thanks 😉 well, with her it's not like a normal kind of unsettled. It's like this: I realized after I posted this that asking this question was kind of dumb because she, and anyone like her, wouldn't be the type of people to reveal themselves enough to even answer this question in this kind of public forum."
However, I did come to learn one thing, when a cousin of mine said that she didn't like being looked at very closely, like you are when you are being drawn, because then the artist will see all your flaws. I hadn't realized anyone would think like that.
My heart went out to her and I said, "Awwww! But no! Just the opposite is true! I discovered that when I began to draw people that, really, everyone is beautiful! It's *not* *at* *all* like a photograph, which permanently freezes a moment in time, which can be very arbitrary. No, a drawing requires an artist to really SEE a person and fall in love with them a little bit. It's an eye opening experience to draw other people--in the best sense of the word!" Which is absolutely true.