A Selfie gone wrong

The good part about pencil sketching is the compliments you get from your polite friends who are willing to forgive you for all your bad and very bad sketches.  The bad part though is, your friends eventually run out of their politeness and start sharing their honest views. No honeymoon lasts forever.

With my previous attempts at self-portrait – A ‘Selfie’ if I may call it not clearing my own biased quality standards I was determined to get it right this time. There can only be two possible reactions to a self-portrait. “Your sketch is good” or “You look better than this”. I had nothing to worry about. A Self-Portrait will be a winner either way. So I spent 2 hours learning few last minute tips and techniques to draw that ultimate portrait and put the new learning to use over the next 8 hours. The result was a decent sketch that to my blinkered vision, looked a photo replica of me. I couldn't wait to see the reaction of the others. In fact I was all set to receive the wow’s and brilliants from the world.

The first response I got from a close friend who is known to be generous with the praises was “???”. Yes, three question marks. Not one, not two but three. When I pushed for a more specific response, the reply was “Not even remotely close” - So much for my cockiness and pride.

If the first response crashed me back to the ground, the second one almost buried me under it. “This is a young Bhaskar”. Clearly suggesting that (a) it is a bad sketch (b) I look lot older in reality – So much for my theory of compliments. 

The third response made the first two sound like compliments. A friend who is known to give honest positive feedback responded thus “Is that your final version”. Clearly, this didn’t look like a completed version for this friend – So much for my perfect portrait.

There were some compliments too - "The features look alright just that the face looks as if some one has twisted the two halves in different direction" Not willing to admit defeat, I decided to post it on FB. Couple of hours later I got 3 personal requests. The politest of them read “Please remove your bad profile picture”

I learnt, that when it comes to sketching human faces, your eyes fooling your brain or your brain fooling your mind is not good enough. Anything short of perfect will be considered bad. 

Watch out, my dear friends.  Save all your compliments. I will get there soon one day some day. Going by the feed back for my last attempt, the soon might be take a little longer. A lot longer maybe.