Eighty-five quid spent on five series of The Wire was a wonderful investment. Great three-dimensional scripts, if not for the faint-hearted. Plus a revelation that computers can be used by non-experts for Identikit work.
But how good are we at describing – even remembering – faces? Right now I’m trying to remember my own. As a conceit I say it’s gaunt but that’s vanity. Lengthy, cylindrical and lugubrious are better.
The ears were taped flat to my head when I was a baby. This has streamlined me for swimming but the ears don’t work well as sound collectors. Bags under-identify those hanging gardens beneath my hazel (Hard to live with that adjective at school) eyes. A long forgotten author, John Lodwick, used “cement sacks” in painting a debauched character’s face and that phrase does the job.
My hair went grey in my twenties but it stayed put. It’s now white and is deliberately left uncombed to cultivate the hand-on-the-tiller/spume-in-the-face look. It is merely untidy. The mouth? Here objectivity begins to fail. The lower lip has links with that of Oscar Wilde. It could be described – by someone without my interests at heart – as that of a sensualist. From the West Riding?
Let’s finish upbeat. The nose is a success. Straight, incisive, right off the face of John Neville. Women have praised it, though possibly in default of anything else. Have you got all that? Combine the details, create a sketch and I’ll publish the one that comes closest.
Note. No help from the inset. I chose it because of its inappropriate name – Dudeman.
But how good are we at describing – even remembering – faces? Right now I’m trying to remember my own. As a conceit I say it’s gaunt but that’s vanity. Lengthy, cylindrical and lugubrious are better.
The ears were taped flat to my head when I was a baby. This has streamlined me for swimming but the ears don’t work well as sound collectors. Bags under-identify those hanging gardens beneath my hazel (Hard to live with that adjective at school) eyes. A long forgotten author, John Lodwick, used “cement sacks” in painting a debauched character’s face and that phrase does the job.
My hair went grey in my twenties but it stayed put. It’s now white and is deliberately left uncombed to cultivate the hand-on-the-tiller/spume-in-the-face look. It is merely untidy. The mouth? Here objectivity begins to fail. The lower lip has links with that of Oscar Wilde. It could be described – by someone without my interests at heart – as that of a sensualist. From the West Riding?
Let’s finish upbeat. The nose is a success. Straight, incisive, right off the face of John Neville. Women have praised it, though possibly in default of anything else. Have you got all that? Combine the details, create a sketch and I’ll publish the one that comes closest.
Note. No help from the inset. I chose it because of its inappropriate name – Dudeman.
