I have a strange idea that while a writer writes a character that character starts to writes itself and is only understood universally when it reaches the reader who eventually decides what it is all about.This idea I have also understood explicitly when I sketch portraits I find lines taking their own course which I did not intended it to take and look like what it actually turned out. This can be said that I am not a good or professional artist, but somehow I feel this happens more in those cases where I know something peculiar about that person.
The portrait in question is one of most known portrait of Noon Meem Rashid the elusive and enigmatic poet. I have been an avid reader of his poetry and found it beautiful, obscure, relentlessly profound and unusual at the same time. To me he is a mystery, so while sketching his portrait when I leave it to the flow the outcome is strange, instead of his pompous look that is so evident in his famous portrait, in my sketch he looks skeptic, doubtful and unsure. Looking at the sketch I thought when people meet others they visualize others according to their own perceptions, so the character and personality that we have in our minds is not of the other person as he/she is but it is what we have perceived them.
The above sketch which I have drawn of N.M.Rashid which shows my skepticism and doubt towards him can well be called my self portrait?
