Remembering a Face

One time a few years ago Jeanette and I encountered a crazy guy on the street. He started yelling at us out of the blue. When we returned home an hour or two later, a little shaken, we set the challenge of drawing him from memory.


Jeanette’s drawing is on the left, and mine on the right. We both got the beady eyes, the broad nose, the brow ridge, the spiked hair, the lines around the mouth, and the stubble. Our recollections varied in the head shape, the mouth, and the ears.

I don’t know if the cops could identify the guy based on our memory sketches.

This exercise gave me even more appreciation for Mort Drucker, the master of drawing faces from memory. If the legends is true, he did many of the MAD magazine movie satires from his recollection after simply watching the movie once through.
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Mort Drucker image from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" courtesy Mike Lynch’s blog:

Lines and Colors post on Drucker:

GurneyJourney Memory Series
Part 1: Art and Memory
Part 2: Memory Game
Part 3: Remembering a Face