I hate the human face. Not any face in particular, I hate every face. I love art. I love everything artistic. I used to think I had some talent when it came to crating art (see the Legion poster in my earlier post). Then, my computer graphics instructor assigned us a project creating a human face digitally. Mine looked like my children’s kindergarten finger-painting. You know, the first one they attempt that looks like a cross between the remains of a slaughter house, and an ink blot test.
When the project was assigned, I thought “cool, I have never attempted this before”. I like to be challenged when it comes to computer graphics, and I thought I would have a half way decent piece that I wouldn’t mind showing my 10 year old. If I showed him this piece, he would give me the look usually reserved for you teenage kids when you show up to the mall in much too reveling cut-off shorts and a Def Leopard T-shirt stained with mustard and motor oil.
Now, I could blame my results on the fact that I did not have a lot of time to work on the project. I could blame it on a lack of instruction. I could even blame it on my 6 year old computer badly needing an upgrade. The truth of the matter is, I have no skill with drawing people, especially on a computer. The plus side to all of this, besides self awareness, is that I had to do this project while my kids were still young enough that I can tell everyone they did it.
strip for June / 19 / 2023 - Office Birthday
1 year ago
Human faces are so hard to do well because the human brain is so good at identifying them. Here's a cool website that tests your face recognition ability.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, we are SO good a face recognition that we commonly make mistakes, seeing faces where none exist. The simplest of these is the emoticon - the smiley. ;-)
But this same phenomenon, called pareidolia, can lead to people "seeing" The Virgin Mary in the swirls of tree bark, or a face on the surface of Mars.
Keep at it!