pda12. Self Portrait of Myself

This is the first self-portrait I tried almost in 20 years. When I was in early 20's, I used a caricature of myself as if it is a stamp or sign, and drew a few self-portraits in cartoon-like manners. I still use 2 of those caricatures, as I've liked those so much.

And over the years, I grew old and became a round-shaped instead of thin, skinny, sharp shape of early 20's. Gradually I've heard more often that my caricatures looked like someone else I drew for.

Now I admit that I'm a round-shaped with few gray-haired, middle-aged man, and that I need to re-adjust what I've thought I had been. After re-evaluating and organizing around myself, the last thing I did to mark symbolically for my changes was to draw self-portrait, and this was the first came out.

As I haven't drawn for several years, my hands didn't work as I had hoped for, but this came out O.K. as my friends agreed, although I didn't agree. I still think I'm much thinner than this.

That circular-glasses is what I used to wear before the present one, which became kind of out out time. That hair style is what I like best, which I triy to keep up with, which is difficult to keep that way.

Even if the caricature doesn't look exactly like me, what I've found out is when a stranger sees both my caricature and myself, he/she tries to find the common factor and to relate those two. So unless the two are extremely different, it's O.K. to use it. (I'm rationalizing I should practice more to re-gain my fluent sketching skills, if you're suspicious on the meaning of the paragraph :).

Anyway I decided to use this caricature of myself in my business card, as I drew it myself recently and this smiling, rounded-face image gives good impression to others who see it.

I'll draw more self-portraits for a couple of years to pick new one later on to replace this.

(February 11, 2003)

Copyright© 2003-2012 Daniel SW Kim