How’s your memory for faces?
The other day I realised something about the way I call up mental images of friends and relations. I was quite surprised. I wonder if your memory cheats on you the same way mine does.
One thing is almost certain. Considering the number of faces there are in the world, you have a pretty amazing talent for recognising facial features when you meet them in the street.
Of course, you’ve been speed-learning faces for rather a long time. You hadn’t been born for very long before it became advisable to know the difference between your mother and the postman or a boiled egg. Recognising faces is necessary for survival.
However… Recognising faces is one thing. Remembering faces in detail is another.
If you want to test your own memory for faces, take a moment to try this. Sit back, close your eyes and conjure up the face of someone you know quite well. Someone – and this is important – of whom you do not possess and have never seen a photo or other image.
Can you visualise this person clearly?
No excuses. No telling yourself you may not be able to recollect their features, but you can hear their voice.
This is about your mind’s eye, not your mind’s ear. In other words, what you are looking for is what you are looking at.
When you are quite clear about what you have seen, (or not, as the case may be…) have a go at visualising someone of whom you do have a photo, or maybe a drawing or a painting.
Ha! This is where we come to my discovery.
All these years I have fondly imagined that when I remember a person’s face, I remember a person’s face.
Wrong.
It has dawned on me that most of the time when I try to call someone to mind, I am not recalling their face as I experienced it in life, a moving, breathing image in three dimensional space. What my mind’s eye is actually presenting me with is nothing but a mental mug shot. Nothing more than an old photo. Static, two dimensional, probably printed on a scrap of paper and sometimes in black and white.
Ah well. Probably all for the best, judging by the spectral nature of the faces I usually succeed in summoning up unaided by a picture.
So what? Make of this what you will.
In any case I’d be interested to know if you tried this little test; and if so, how you got on.
More about faces and facial expressions on my website
Tags: drawing faces, expressions, learning, memory, photo
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PAINTER 12 BRUSHES
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I do have a couple of questions for you if it’s okay. Is it simply me or do some of the responses appear like coming from brain dead people? 
And, if you are writing at other social sites, I’d like to follow you. Could you make a list all of your communal sites like your twitter feed, Facebook page or linkedin profile?
I also did a lot of conte crayon work on faces in school! But unlike Barb, I really struggle with remembering faces. When I close my eyes and try to visualize a face it is like another art school exercise. The one that you do when you draw the face in one, unbroken line, never lifting your pencil from the paper. I can bring up and visualize the most distinctive visual features but everything else is hazy. I am sure a lot of it is due to my MS, but I grief over the loss of faces.
Hi Valerie,
Nice to “see” you again. How about a picture of your face?
I think I’m pretty good with remembering faces. If you really want to get to know someone, sit quietly and have them pose for you while you draw them as accurately as possible. This is a most pleasurable experience when you love that person. The pen, brush, or pencil becomes an extension of one’s hand caressing the face while you transfer that to paper or canvass. And later, when ever you look at the work you produced you will be transported back in time to the experience of being with the person you so lovingly tried to capture.
Many years ago I took a class in drawing faces with conte pencils. In the six weeks we drew, studying contours was stressed over and over. Look at your subject, she said. Get the line right, she said, and the rest will follow.
I must say I’ve spent far more time studying lines on faces than I have finished drawing or painting those faces. It’s a fascinating study, though I fear I’m sometimes wondered about, as I stare. (See how the lines change as the expression does?)
My daughter’s two best friends at the time were absolutely- identical twins whom I could not tell apart. I just called them by both names. (They didn’t help by dressing alike and doing everything together! The only difference they allowed was their daily choice of jewelry. Well, that didn’t help any more than a parked blue car helps as a landmark.)
One day at a school track meet, long after the drawing class had ended, Erin and her friends came up to my bleacher seat, and as the twins stood there talking, I studied their faces. And had an AhHa! The bridges of their noses were different! Not in width, but in structure. I quickly ascertained which girl was which, and have since then had no trouble identifying them correctly. I still see them occasionally, after 25 years, and take a quick look at the nose bridge before addressing them. Correctly.
So, Val, I do remember voices too, but faces have interested me for a very long time… I find very few faces static. Thanks for sharing your story. I love your posts!
Barb