Self Portrait and Mirrors

Lacking an entourage to take my picture, I resort to mirrors and my trusty digital cam.
 

After blithely announcing that I was going to focus on painting, I discovered through humiliating trial and error that I first needed to learn the basics of drawing. Semi-daunted, I found a drawing class by Ann Holland offered at Eastern Shore's Own in Exmore.

She recommended a book called "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" by Betty Edwards. The first project in the book is a pre-training self portrait. Determined to power my way through to competence, I set myself up in front of a full-length mirror and tried to draw.

But kneeling in the bathroom doorway with a piece of charcoal, sketch pad on the floor, didn't work at all. My knees hurt, and as I moved (constantly) the would-be picture changed. We had been encouraged to initially "frame" our drawings with a little cardboard viewfinder, as a learning device for teaching image composition. But, when I held the viewfinder to my reflected image, all I could see through the viewfinder was me, holding a viewfinder. It set me to thinking.

Mirrors are truly odd things. And self-portraits are even more odd, because you can't see yourself directly, only in reflection. Are the reflections accurate? Can you ever know?

One problem needed solving immediately. I simply wasn't experienced enough to sketch a moving object, so I had to freeze my own image in order to draw it. Out came the trusty digital cam.

What a blast! The reflections of reflections made wonderful images. I don't know if I can draw them, but the photos were cool.

After holding the mirror and camera in dozens of positions, I realized that there was one picture I couldn't take. I don't know why, but deep in the multiple reflections was an image of myself in the small mirror. No matter how many times I tried to photograph that face in the small mirror, I could not.

Why? I wish I knew. The face was surely mine. Brows knit in a worried frown. Dimples turned to dog-jowl scowl. Tired eyes. The multiple reflections had stripped away the real world and left me with a magical glimpse at my naked face. And the me in the mirror seemed more solid than anything in sight. It was unbeautiful and worn. Worried. And it talked to me as if it weren't me, as if the reflection had a life of its own and my lips of flesh were not moving.

The experience was vaguely scary. Disconnected. I can see how mirrors were considered the tools of witches. That face, deep down in layers of glass, was a haunting revelation.