Accidentally drawing famous people's faces appears to be a motif in my life. When I was about 10, I decided to try drawing a male face because I only drew female faces. I ended up with an absurdly accurate sketch of Jay Leno, completely unintentional but amusing. A few years later, I tried to draw a female profile - something at which I remain useless. I ended up with Naomi Campbell. Then years later in secondary school, our Art teacher instructed us to choose a portrait of someone from a newspaper or magazine and paint our own interpretation of it on canvas. I found a striking image in a weekend newspaper supplement, which appeared to be a painting of a photograph (which would make mine a painting of a painting of a photograph) of an exotic, thick-browed woman with dark red-stained lips and a superior expression. The strong outlines of the picture gave me confidence that I could pull of a reasonably convincing version of it's general form, and then interpret colours and shading myself.
I found the painting at the back of my wardrobe the other day (at least it's fifth home), and every time I see it I remember being engrossed in it for a whole week of Art lessons (approx 5 hours), even using texturing paste (a lot of effort for this lazy art student) and being very pleased with the lips but disgusted with the shading on the eyes and the perspective of the ring. But the memory that stands out most is when I brought it home to show the parents, and as soon as I unveiled it, there was a joint exclamation of "Oh very good - Maria Callas". Despite coming from a classical music loving house (with very specific opera tastes which I don't think include her particularly), I only knew her name - I had no clue what she looked like. For the last week, I had been having a staring competition with one of the most famous singers in the world. Can you beat my staring contest record?!
