I tried to draw from an old photo of my Mom and auntie (‘Emo’ <이모> in Korean) holding ‘baby-me.’ I picked the photo because it is one of my favorite old black and white picture. And also, if I draw well enough it felt like a good idea to give my drawing to Emo as a present.

Only shortly after starting to draw it I realized ‘oh, I’ve never learned how to draw a portrait.’ I had no clue how to draw a person’s face! Only faces I drew were those of Mickey Mouse+Donald Duck‘s!

At one moment I thought about quitting because Mom and Emo didn’t look like Mom and Emo at all (at one point they didn’t look like a human!) but it felt kind of bad to leave a drawing of family members unfinished… so I kept drawing.

My teacher (Ms. Anne McGhee) told me several times “Don’t try to be a perfectionist.” What an encouraging phrase! So after hours of struggling with the two women’s faces  (at this point they are totally new characters by my creation) and just blurring my (the baby’s) face,  I decided to call it a day. It didn’t feel too bad to almost skip MY face because it is MINE.

Mom, Emo, and Baby-me

It is good that you always learn from any drawing. So I learned that…

1. I should learn how to draw a portrait.
2. drawing a familiar face is very challenging.
3. if you erase the drawing too many times, you can make a hole in the paper.
4. just one small dot or line can make a huge difference in a person’s face.

Little bonus for me is that I learned how to make GIF for the first time with a help of a free Mac program, GIPHY Capture.