Today, I drew my self-portrait. It was a simple line drawing
with charcoal pencil. To draw the portrait, I looked in a mirror I leaned up
against some books placed beside my drawing tablet on the small easel on the
dining room table. My back was to a large picture window, and the light that
flooded the paper was natural and harsh.
I drew the portrait quickly without thinking and without
erasures. I was surprise that the proportions of my face were not distorted in
my usual fashion of drawing a face with one side shorter than the other—lop
sided.
The thing that I had not counted on was how wrinkled and
sagged my face had become. How could I have not noticed? I shaved its jaw every
morning.
The portrait hid
nothing. The skin under my chin was loose and drooped. My neck was not fat, but
the skin hung down and formed a triangle running into my shirt collar. I drew
my nose with pores and larger than I remembered. Under my eyes were lines, and
there were wrinkles radiating from the corners but perhaps not from laughing
too much.
My forehead was exaggerated in the drawing too, or had my
hair receded that much? How could that be?
My hair was thinner too. Where did that brooding look come from? Who was
this man I had drawn?
I looked at my work, at the portrait I had drawn. Was this
the man everyone sees? I wanted to tear the paper, to shred it, to hide the
truth drawn so clearly—the truth I had become.
