Craggy faces are good, but when it's your own?

I love to see photos of well used craggy faces, I remember a fantastic one of Michael Parkinson

, WH Auden is another classic, craggy is undoubtably better to draw and paint than smooth perfect, you want to get to know craggy people , they will tell a good story. But when that face is your own what then?

A little confession, I spend my lunchtimes watching rubbish on the telly, every day, Neighbours and Home and Away; in order to make this habit a bit more constructive, I draw whilst watching, I do my once a day observation practice. The last couple of day I have got out the mirror and drawn me, my face. Now you have to bare in mind that when you draw, you concentrate, and it takes quite a while so its impossible to grin at yourself for this length of time, so invariably self portraits are a bit solom and intense, I am not the miserable git that I appear.

I know this is a reasonable likeness because I have double checked all the lines, their relationships and relative weight, it was drawn over two lunchtimes so this would account for the slight 2 faces stuck together kind of look, all I want to say is that this is not what I see when I think about me in my head, that internal she is 25 years old , quite goodlooking and sort of smilingly, intelegently, interesting.

I'm not even saying that getting old is rubbish, cos its not, old me is far more confident and self assured that young me, she's also more tollerant, open minded determined and quitely ambitious.

There is just a difference that's all, so when Helen Mirren says she is scared to look in the mirror, maybe this is what she means. I intend just to enjoy the difference, and consider the little jolt that these eye/mind contrasts give me as just a little acceptance challenge, a challenge to enrich the soul.