Recently, I worked up a new self portrait to use as my avatar on LinkedIn and on the about page of this site.

I wanted to create something really fun and cute, that looked just like me now. The old photo I used to use everywhere was when I was going through a glasses phase, and the photo I used as my headshot before that was when I was dying my hair a lot of different colors.

I came up with some quick sketches, settling on a pose that was cute and quirky. It felt a bit like Glamor Shots by Deb in Napoleon Dynamite without being too overly cheesy.

But then, as I worked…

I never realized this before but every self portrait I’ve ever done has been wrong.

This is my brand spanky new self portrait slash illustration business avatar. It’s bright and happy and fun and cute. I ended up ditching the chin on the hand pose I had come up with for something that felt a little less busy.

But it’s not accurate, dude.

Here’s a recent photo of me with my kids. Notice how my hair is swooping over the other eye?

So get this.

I’m willing to bet most if not all artists are creating inaccurate self portraits.

Because we have to look in a mirror to do them.

Mind.

Blown.

In the sketches stage of my new self portrait, I tried to make one that was accurate, and I’d been drawing my hair swooping over my left eye for so long that drawing it over the correct eye felt stunted and weird.

And somehow looked wrong to me.

I was going to tell you Norman Rockwell knew what was up in his Triple Self Portrait… but then… Which of these three self portraits is reality’s mirror image? Is the artist that’s looking into the mirror physically correct to Norman Rockwell the real person, or is that the one that’s mirror image, with the self portrait in the mirror and on the canvas being physically correct?

It’s like Inception, I tell you.

Examine your own most recent self portrait and report back!

Is it mirror image? I bet it is!