First impressions count and we only get one chance to make a good first impression. In the online world, your first impression is made with your face – your profile picture.
The picture you choose to display defines you as a person. It is your pseudo-personality, that seems likeable, approachable, interesting and intriguing enough to strike a conversation with. Or so do people think!
It is not only the social networks, but also all important documents that validate your existence, need a profile picture. It is not wrong to say, that without the picture of your face, you might not even exist on paper or online!
It is interesting to observe that every person tries to project their best selves with a profile picture selected over a thousand options. Though each profile pic differs from the other (like your FB profile pic will be different from driving license image and Tinder profile pic would be different from Twitter DP) it shows the human desire to project themselves differently in front of every audience & look their best. Competitively, better than others too.
The artiste finds it interesting to check out different profile pictures and study their face expressions. She is fascinated that a face is such a work of art that even with the same eyes, nose, lips and ears, a million faces are created and each one is so different from the other. A face can also tell you about the nationality & religious background of the person. A face and its version of profile picture is the object of interest in this case, and the artiste has made faces with minimum lines and had added character to each with different patterns.
This is neither an endeavour for a feature archive nor a work of fiction. The artist tries to make each face interesting by reproducing the face as she would like to see it. This emphasises on the concept of profile picture, wherein everyone keeps an image that is pleasing to all, which is different from reality.
Creator of these faces Aastha Choudhary is an independent artist and illustrator based in Mumbai.
Suruchi Bhavsar