Self Portraits - Do I Have To?

In a quiet moment recently (while doing my Morning Pages) I heard pretty loud and clear a call to do self portraits. I was not happy to hear this. I hated that exercise in art school, and I tended to shy away from drawing faces, partly as a result.

Well I broke down and did the first, in my moleskine (using a Staedtler pigment liner, 0.5), and I sort-of got into it by the end. I'm not quite satisfied with the drawing, and you can see how much I loved the experience from my expression.

I'm curious to see how my face evolves as I continue this. Yes, I heard the beatings will continue until morale improves.

To me this is a fair likeness - but to other family members it's not. I don't think we tune into the same things about faces - and when someone draws a face you get the filtered version, only the things they tune into. So, in a way, a drawing of a face reveals how the artist sees that face. I'm not talking about some deliberate artistic license - I mean the artist can do his or her best to capture exactly what she or he sees, and the results will puzzle some people who see different things.