For this exercise, I was asked to consider Facial Pareidolia – a phenomenon where our brains perceive faces or other familiar shapes in random and irrelevant objects. This is a common and well-documented experience, and most people are likely to notice it at least once in their life. Many artists working in a wide range of mediums have used this concept to their advantage. I was asked to find as many examples of this concept as possible and create a collection.
I started by photographing the things I already knew fit under this category, mainly marks around my home that have happened naturally over the years it has been lived in. I am quite attuned to pareidolia, and I find myself frequently pointing out how things look like other things, often to other people’s surprise. Because this was at the forefront of my mind, I started looking at other things differently around my house and photographing what I saw. I then got some photos of front doors as they are especially fitting for the concept.
Once I had collected my photos, I decided to draw over them using Procreate to signal where I thought the faces – or creatures – were. I then experimented with alternative styles for a handful of them. This was a lot of fun – I really enjoyed making the characters I could see in front of me come to life. Despite constantly seeing faces/creatures/characters in my environment made up of inanimate objects, I had never considered using that as a basis for an illustration or even drawing what it was I could see.
I enjoyed that this exercise forced me to look at the world differently. Overall, I spent about a week building my collection, considering where I could find faces and how I could use what was around me. I even asked friends to send me pictures of their front doors to see if any of them had exciting faces on them. I love that this unit is teaching me that anything can go into my sketchbook if I want it to. It’s almost like I needed to be told, ‘hey, you can draw everything in your brain if you want!’ – and I’m feeling more and more confident in doing that by the day.
Learning Log 