or “How I Discovered That I Have Something in Common With Sergeant Boobs.”
It is not my intention to go into detail about the meaning and thinking behind my painting “Sergeant Boobs is Combat Ready”. Those who are interested can visit her dedicated page here.
In this blog entry I propose instead to bring to your attention something amazing about the subconscious.
As a lifelong enthusiast for animation, I have read and heard the same thing said many times: Animators subconsciously draw themselves. It appears to be true and demonstrably so. It usually manifests in how a character moves or even the physical appearance of the animator is echoed quite unmistakably.
For example, here is my childhood hero, the late, great, Ward Kimball who drew the Hipster Crows in Disney’s original feature length cartoon, Dumbo.
An even more striking example is the animator Art Babbit, who drew Gepetto in Pinocchio.
Over the years, when I was working as an animator, I often wondered why I seemed to buck this trend. I wasn’t aware of drawing myself, of my cartoon characters looking like me in any way. I even found it a little disappointing to be honest.
Take Sergeant Boobs for example. I do not have 8 breasts. My head is not the same shape. I do not look anything like her. She does have one thing in common with other creations of mine however. From an early age, I have always been amused by the practice of drawing googly eyes with one pupil as a large, vacant circle in a small eye and the other a small dot in a large eye…
Now here is the amazing thing: I went for an eye test about ten years ago and it turns out that I am short sighted in one eye and long sighted in the other!!! Pretty much all my life, I had indeed been subconscioously drawing myself all along.
I guess that is the point. I never realised it because it was exactly that – subconscious. I think it is incredible. What do you think?
WILL MOBBERLEY FINE ARTIST 