I make faces when I draw, especially when I’m drawing a character behaving emotionally. I act. I generate the feelings that I’m trying to reproduce on paper. It’s not big and dramatic but it is obvious enough that I consciously have to keep myself from doing it when I’m drawing in public places.
One of the great revelations of my childhood was the discovery that other people didn’t have stories and adventures and voices and monsters and big bright worlds bouncing around in their heads. Poor other people.
In talking about creating her new memoir, Fun Home, Alison Bechdel said she photographed herself in all the positions she then drew the people into. She was her own artist’s model. She said it helped her emotionally inhabit her father, for example (the book’s mostly about her & her father). It was a use of the digital camera I hadn’t thought of.
Digital cameras rock. They’re so much more handy than film cameras. Too bad I’m still a lousy photographer.