You might have noticed that I’ve got a new graphic at the top of this page. That’s because I had my hair cut short recently, in an elaborate springtime ritual designed to appease the gods of winter and hearken the warmer weather of summer. Plus I was really tired of pushing my hair out of my eyes.
At first I thought it would be no big deal simply to scrunch up the hair in my caricature, too. I use Corel Draw, which makes it easy to grab a piece of a picture and make adjustments. When I tried to cut my own hair on the computer, though, it didn’t look right … just like when I try to cut my own hair in real life.
So I went to istockphoto.com and downloaded a new graphic from the same artist who did the one I used to have at the top of this page. (My other picture wasn’t a custom piece, either. It actually started out as an image of a black woman with some playing cards. I just changed the colors and the cards to make her look like me.)
This time, I chose a graphic with three women, figuring I could save some money — three heads for the price of one! I thought I would cut and paste the hair from each woman on to my existing caricature, like a wig, fill in my new brown lowlights, and then choose the one that looked most like me.
But once I had the image on screen, I chose a new direction. I decided to cut and paste the face from my old cartoon into the new picture instead, so it would look like I have a bunch of tarot-reading friends. Which I do.
In further point of fact, all of my tarot-reading friends are thin, young, and attractive-looking, and we often linger for hours on sidewalk cafes, sipping tea and coffee and smiling broadly at each other because we’re so urbane.
Trust me. We think we’re thin, young, and attractive looking, and that’s all that really matters.
I used to show myself holding a tarot card from the Gilded Tarot deck. This time I was able to show a new card — one from the new deck I’m designing, which is now being called the Book of Shadows Tarot. It adds just one more touch of realism to the picture.
All in all, I’d have to say my new graphic is completely accurate, and you should have no problem recognizing me based on the image.
Unless, of course, you’re my 17-year-old daughter. When she looked at it, I had to say, "Yeah. I’m the one in the middle."
