Beautiful People Are the Hardest to Draw: Interview with a Courtroom Artist | Hacker News Reader

Beautiful People Are the Hardest to Draw: Interview with a Courtroom Artist

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123 pointsdwwoelfel30 comments

Not an expert for face perception but I think faces are believed to be stored in memory in terms of their deviation from the standard face (the average face in your environment). Since beautiful faces happen to be precisely the faces that are close to the average, it's completely unsurprising that they are hard to capture because their deviations from the standard face are really subtle. Storage of faces as differences from the standard face also explains why white people find it hard to distinguish Asian faces (and the reverse): they all deviate from a white standard face in a similar way. Caricatures can also explain by this because a caricature is what you get when you amplify someone's deviations from the standard face.

While I'm inclined to agree with you, do you have any supporting evidence?

Nice explanation. Is there any literature that explains how faces are stored in memory? Fascinating.

The CP is discussing basically prototypes/schemas (essentially; schemas are debunked now but they're useful for understanding by analogy how connectionist cognitive models work); I don't know of any pop science books ala Thinking Fast and Slow about this topic but it's not hard to research. I would start with schema theory and other derived memory representations, the TRACE word recognition model, semantic networks, and neural networks.

PsychInfo is probably the best database for this, if you can't get access to it I'd recommend using google scholar and libgen.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-race_effect

Faces are processed in an entirely different part of the brain than regular vision, which is why you can be blind but still recognize people. (Or vice versa if you're face blind.)

I like this explanation too. It also fits with my thinking that when you think someone looks just like someone else, ask another person and they can't see it. I believe this is down to the way our brain recognises matching features against the stored 'standard face' of an person, but other people don't match in the same way as their 'standard face' is different.

Nice model, but unfortunately it's not true. Neocortex doesn't have 'special face diff storage mechanism'. It doesn't work like this.

I doubt scientists know that much on how brain works.

Really? How do you know this? I thought that our knowledge about how things are stored in the brain was extremely poor.

It seems that we do have some pretty specialised mechanisms in our heads for dealing with human faces, given how good we are at recognising them compared to other things. Even tiny changes in face shape (ie expression) are instantly recognisable and can cause major emotional responses.

Is that similar to the concept of the Eigenface?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenface

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, though. I would say it is something similar to a distinct symmetry.

Here's poor Tom Brady (Patriots Quarterback) in court:

https://usatftw.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/cmoycq4woaa2mt1....

"They're cutting each others' throats as vividly as they can."

The very last line of the interview is what scares me about our future. Yes, we've always been cut throat, but in my life--right now--I see people whom are willing to sell their souls in order make more money. Or, maybe since a lot of us question whether their is a soul; we do horrid things in the name of business? Or, maybe I'm too sensitive to how money can corrupt; my sister pretty much put my mother on the streets with her greedy, money manipulating mouth.

I wasen't part of the Hippy generation, but they did not act the way we are acting now? At least they tried to change?

I don't find our current society progressive, or fashionable. The "Power Couple", "I will do anything to make the Paper", "Buy that book on how to manipulate people, and make money." "I'll build my scalable site so I can live like that little weasel?" I honestly find it all disgusting--

(Off topic, but through out that interview; it just reminded me how ugly society has gotten, and not just the defendants in the court rooms. I guess I just was expecting a light article about art?)

Only commenting to say you are not alone thinking about this.

It was an interesting read, but I'm frustrated at how link baity the title is.

There actually was no discussion of how "beautiful people" are hard to draw. Read the whole article looking for the line. Very frustrating.

It was in the Tom Brady section.

You know what's hardest to draw? Beautiful people. Reproducing beauty is hard. Beauty is usually based on very fine, careful proportions with no irregularities. There are a couple judges who are just too handsome or too pretty. It's a challenge going in to draw them. It's a challenge to get a good likeness of them. A lot of beautiful people are just bland.

Yes, some "beautiful people" are bland, with very symmetrical features, etc. What seems to matter is some mix of averageness, and ratios of feature sizes and arrangement.[0,1] But I've also noticed that some strikingly beautiful people not at all like that. And in some contexts, they can be just as dramatically ugly.

[0] http://petapixel.com/2013/05/28/what-averaged-face-photograp...

[1] http://faceresearch.org/students/averageness

Pro tip: If you are ever trying to report on a high-profile court case and there is an overflow room where they pipe in CCTV, go to that room because the camera angles will be much more conducive to getting a good view of the defendant.

Unless you want to see the reaction of the jury. Those cameras rarely cover the jury in my experience.

>> There are a couple judges who are just too handsome or too pretty. It's a challenge going in to draw them.

There are no beautiful people in courtrooms. Everyone is under some sort of stress. Lawyers and defendants can win or loose, jurors don't want to be there, the court officers are busy moving prisoners around and acting authoritatively. Even the galleries are full of unhappy family members. It's no surprise that this artist mentions the judges. They are in charge. They know that no matter what happens they will still be in charge come the end of the day. Confident people always look better than those under stress.

Stress doesn't make someone not beautiful, your premise is flawed.

Men are easier to sketch because shadows, sharp angles and the "irregularities" of your pencil line tend to look masculine. For example, shadows tend to look like facial hair. The slightest flaw on a woman's face is generally more dramatic and unflattering--you want a thinner, softer, smoother line without shadows. Sketches by definition are quick and dirty--which doesn't work out as well for people with delicate features.

Don't know about we learn much about the difficulty of drawing beautiful faces, however the images of the artist's work were impressive.

The traditional boundary between "art" and "illustration" isn't hard and fast. The latter is valued for its utility, but there's always a possibility that mere workman's duty will be exceeded, with the result carrying a sensibility well above its intended purpose.

I think that may be the case for this particular sketch artist. The drawings seem to capture not only how individuals look, but also portray something of their emotional states, contrasts among them obvious, interesting and surprising. The relational elements are echoed in the subtleties of spacing, angles and proportion, factors that begin to delineate "art" from the prosaic.

The article shows the artist to be quite a character himself. In a way reminiscent of 1940's newspaper photographer "Weegee" (Arthur Fellig), who similarly transcended the common utilitarian aspects of his job, ranking among the best photographers of the 20th century.

It's refreshing to know there are inspired souls putting forth such noteworthy effort and contributing more than we could expect.

Is this drawing thing in court rooms specific to US? And why is drawing allowed and not taking pictures?

Because you have to draw the line somewhere.

It's kinda similar to how you can take notes, but not record.

It's standard in the UK too.

The font used for the interviewer's text is striking. What is it?

Freight Micro Pro: https://typekit.com/fonts/freight-micro-pro

Ah, that is why I am so un-photogenic. Explains it. Thanks.

It explains it how? Have people told you that you have an easy face to draw?

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