Day 22

'Reading people's Faces' Pen on Napkin

I had actually started a drawing for today which I will postpone until tomorrow, the reason being I had been celebrating my birthday this weekend and as part of the celebrations was heading out for food with a few close friends. We went somewhere close to home, which fortunately was bring your own alcohol, but unfortunately rather than booking it's a case of turn up at the right time and you'll get a table or have to wait for an hour. Thanks to one of the guys phoning ahead it seemed that a table was pretty much kept for us meaning that as soon as walking through the door it was food time... but due to a mix up as another party of a similar size phoned a head too it turned out it wasn't our table, so we were ousted. This meant having to wait a lot longer than expected which almost led to me not being able to get a drawing done, again it seemed I was going to need to improvise.

As we sat around having a few beers aiming to pass the time as you normally do in any social situation, by talking about sometimes banal but often interesting and funny things. In these situations there always seems to be one point of the conversation that for one reason of another tends to stick in the mind... normally as it's a comment that's a little left of field, or something that everyone can get a lot of comedy value from. On this occasion due to a conversation opening up regarding people's obsession with how the look, one person made a comment that rather than seeing people's obvious flaws he looked at everyone the same. Which led onto the thought of rather than seeing a persons features, everyone looked the exact same... a bulbous blur with the person name appearing across the centre as the only distinguishing characteristic. At the time it was quite a funny thought but on reflection it is also quite poignant, I decided then to draw an interpretation of what had been mentioned with the only tools I had to hand a stolen Biro and a bunch of napkins. It is quite an interesting thought that although were all made up of the same characteristics, eyes, nose, mouth, ears', etc. that each of us in their own way looks unique. If we were just a bulbous blur with a name attached, would it make a difference to how we view people? It's hard to think that it wouldn't... due to the fact that much of our personality is linked to our appearance. Our thoughts on how other people perceive us, how we perceive other people and how we actually perceive ourselves has a major effect on how we project ourselves in certain social situations. Our appearance then can cause us to feel insecure, confident or even indifferent but should it be something that we get so hung up on or should we try to just let things be as they are and worry a little less, as essentially were all just a mish-mash of seemingly similar characteristics with our very own uniqueness.