Someone like you
find the familiar faces
Howdy cartoon-lovers. Tell me, when you read the title of this post, did you start singing, in Rod Stewart’s voice, “someone like you…” or did you rather bring Adele’s “...someone like you” to mind? Well guess what, this is a totally different thing! It’s “someone like you,” a ToonStack post brought to you by me, Amy K. Things look and sound like other things all the time. Especially people. You know how some people have prosopagnosia, also known as face-blindness, where they can see faces but not recognize them out of context? Well, I have the opposite disease, which is where almost every person I meet looks familiar to me. This is especially true with cartoon faces, which are designed to get you, the looker, to hallucinate familiarity onto them. Sometimes we cartoonists are drawing random shapes and lines with no intention of matching those features to a real person’s, and other times we are drawing our mothers, our partners, our pets, and our children, and you don’t know the difference!!! That’s why today, I asked the ToonStackers to share a cartoon where they drew someone real into the scene – either on purpose or by accident. Let’s see who they conjured.
Amy Hwang
The week this cartoon was printed, I received a text from a friend. She said she had just seen my cartoon, as she was popping popcorn in preparation for hosting a book club. The coincidence was purely accidental.
Amy Kurzweil
When this cartoon sold back in 2019, I was thrilled. Bubbe’s gonna be in The New Yorker! I shouted aloud. The cartoon printed, and then came the hate mail. This cartoon is ageist, a disgruntled reader wrote to me. It promotes an unflattering and stereotypical portrait of grandmothers and older women. As a person who (spoiler) will one day be an older woman (hopefully), this accusation upset me. But this is my grandmother, I thought! Grandma — not Grandmas — Digest. It’s just the one grandma— mine! She’s so great. Would you like to see her freezer? and her couches? Bubbe turns 96 in April. Brb gotta go give her a call.
Kendra Allenby
Several times, I’ve drawn characters from real life without knowing it. But by far the most remarkable is the case of Trote the Pony, where a wonderful woman named Nikki let me know that the 5 Shetland ponies I drew in my cartoon were all actual, real-life Shetland ponies that she knew and loved. You can peek at all the ponies and their unintended portraits here.
Jason Chatfield
I take any excuse I can get to draw Morris into a cartoon.
Leise Hook
How well do I know the Princess Diana Beanie Baby (seen here on the right in incognito mode, i.e. without her white rose embroidery)? Quite well. Even though she was a counterfeit purchased in an open air market, we had many adventures in the late ‘90s (I am a millennial and I wear a side part).
Ellis Rosen
I get all kinds of comments when I post a cartoon to Instagram, and the vast majority of them are nice. There are the occasional rude/mean ones, and there are the kind of comments that are probably well meaning but still annoy me. One example of this kind of comment is the “Why did you draw (name of celebrity) into this cartoon?” The idea being that, for whatever reason, according to this commenter, a character in my cartoon looks like someone famous in real life. Let me be clear: If you think that I have drawn a celebrity into my cartoon, please know that unless directly stated, any resemblance to anyone in real life is purely coincidental. So with all that, let me just say that…
…this isn't George W. Bush.
This isn’t Conan O’Brien.
This isn't Quinten Tarantino.
This, however, is my daughter Sadie.
Olivia de Recat
A couple of years ago, I found myself doing really specific portraits of people I'd never met. I started thinking: What if these people DO exist? How could I find them?
So I created a game on Instagram called “Accidental Portrait Contest.” It's like a treasure hunt, where people find the closest match to a random face I've drawn. The portraits are inspired by a kind of store consciousness– maybe a combination of people I've seen on the street, faces from dreams, friends, actors, passersby. People tag their friends or acquaintances or themselves. I go through the submissions and choose a winner. Or I ask the internet to vote on the closest match.
I interview the winners, always ending with the question: “What do you like most about your own face?” It’s kind of an awkward question, which is why I love it. Almost everyone I’ve interviewed talks about being uncomfortable at one point or another with their physicality. It’s so beautiful and reassuring to know that almost everyone struggles with the strangeness of form/appearance in this life.
Here are a couple favorite matches from over the years:
Khalil
“My favorite feature is my freckles. When I was younger I used to get teased for them and was insecure because they made me stick out, and for that reason I hated them. But now that I'm older, that's the very reason I appreciate them. Plus, one of them formed into the shape of a heart and a musical note which I use as motivation when I feel like giving up on music.
What are the odds of this? I guess if you draw any face, someone out there is bound to look like or identify with it but even if features are picked at random, what influences that? Perhaps you saw me once and didn't pay it no mind, but the brain remembered. Or, maybe it's a collective unconsciousness phenomena, and the universe made you draw me so it could draw me towards your page. Maybe I'm astral projecting at night, hopping in people's dreams.”
Kalen
“My favorite feature is definitely my eyes. They are blue with gold flecks - a mix of my mom and dad's.
Like most women, I had a difficult time with my appearance growing up. I always had a curvier body shape than society's expectations, and felt like my face was plain. Then, I lost my parents and I started searching myself for signs of them. Now, I love how my eyes are a mix of theirs and that my cleft chin resembles my dad's, that my smile and cheeks are my mom, that you can see traces of them and my siblings through me.”
I could go on forever about Accidental Portraits and I’m definitely about to get mushy. But when I reflect on what makes it special, I think it has to do with seeing the familiar out in the world. It’s like finding the face of a friend you were looking for in a crowd. Exhilarating and comforting at the same time. And there’s this communal aspect. It's a big search party: “HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PERSON?” “DO YOU KNOW THEM?” But instead of the person themselves being lost, the drawing is lost, waiting to find someone.
I’ve met so many amazing people through this project. It gives me hope!
Told you I’d get tender. You were warned!!
You can help me find the latest Accidental Portrait winner on my instagram. And here are some other great matches.
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