“How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”
- C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces
Since my last update, vision is my left eye is slightly improved (I can almost read the 20/30 line on the Snellen chart), but vision in right eye has become worse (double vision effect most likely due to the cataract).
But the most startling development since my cornea transplants is that I can see faces again, especially the subtleties of facial expressions. As my Fuchs Dystrophy progressed, I stopped seeing faces – all I could see were blurry spots where eyes, noses and mouths should be. Subtleties of facial expression were completely lost on me. Then, about a month or so after the first cornea transplant, I was startled by faces at the grocery store, coffee shop, and around town. Seeing a furrowed brow, an eyeroll, a quizzical look, or a smile – something most of us take for granted – was a novelty to me, a pleasant, and much welcome, surprise. I feel as though I’ve been missing out on a vital dimension of life.
In spite of the progress, my vision is still not good enough to resume my old practice of café sketching (I’ve tried but I need to see at least a certain level of detail in order to capture a likeness or personality in a café setting), so I have resorted to sketching from photographs. The above page was sketched from photos taken years ago of neighborhood kids (back when I was an illustration student trying to build a reference library of poses). I haven’t drawn faces in a while, and certainly not in a sketchbook like this. I am struggling to draw hands, and I don’t feel this page has the energy of café sketches executed on location, but I need to start somewhere. This page was sketched with a BLACKWING 602, a pencil I started using while working at DreamWorks long ago. Drawing with pencil on paper again takes me back to my childhood, and remembering why I wanted to be an artist in the first place.
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