Drawing faces is hard 😐

Artist struggles, a tale as old as antiquity

Normally I wait to post my comics until I’ve found some historic background for the images I’m ripping off turning into jokes. Yes, the artists I draw from have been dead for centuries, but it feels more generous to provide some context as to why they’re so laughably bizarre (or in this case, just downright bad).

Sadly, I couldn’t find anything to explain what’s happening in this illustration. I do know when it was made, and where, and possibly who the artist was. The image is taken from a hand-drawn account of the exploits of Alexander the Great, written (and presumably drawn) by Thomas de Kent in Plantagenet England, circa 1308-1312.

There’s also not a lot I can say about Thomas de Kent’s work itself, mostly because the manuscript is not accessible online, and the only translations that exist are from Old French (the original language) into modern French, neither of which I speak. So I have no clue what’s happening in the picture, why the two characters look like emojis, or why their bodies both defy biological explanation (just look at that… side butt??)

What I do know about Thomas de Kent’s work is that chunks of it simply could not be translated because they were so poorly scrawled that they were almost impossible to decipher.

I love this little factoid, because it probably means that, despite this being a lengthy work created by a professional illuminator, it’s just kind of… not good? And someone else (not the artist) hung onto an old manuscript with wonky penmanship and goofy illustrations for literal centuries.

That’s a long way for an illustration to travel to be a punchline, but hey, I’d love for my panels to be talked about centuries from now, even as a joke.

And to be fair, FACES ARE VERY HARD TO DRAW

I’m clearly not the only one who struggles. Adam and Eve were notoriously hard to draw:

Beatus of Liébana, Commentaria in Apocalypsin (the ‘Beatus of Saint-Sever’), Saint-Sever before 1072

Mary, Mother of God:

Abrégé des histoires divines, France, possibly Amiens, between 1300 and 1310

These shards of stained glass, which look a bit like my most used emoji roster:

Adam and Eve, making another appearance:

Adam, Eve, and the Serpent by Schlapperitzin, Konrad ca. um 1445

Lets be honest—faces and arms and legs… and trees… and birds… ALL OF THEM, HARD TO DRAW

Thomasin von Zerklaere: Welscher Gast.

So hard.

Love your creations, my dears—you never know who’s going to be looking at them (or when).

All my love,

🖤Becca Lee, Haunted Librarian🖤