These two self-protraits are requirements of the drawing class. The first I made was kind of too serious. Then I remember what one of my ex-colleagues's reminding words. Whenever I felt frustrated, he always urged me to keep smiling. So today when I began to make a second self-portrait, I told myself to make a smiling face. I think it is necessary to keep smiling if we try to be resilient and survive the turbulent world of today even though it does not always show that way.
There are two pictures of smiling images which I would never forget. One, of course, is Mona Lisa. It was so important to DaVinci that he took Mona Lisa wherever he went in his life. Art historians have been working hard to know why as well as the lady's mysterious smile. Some researchers concluded that Mona Lisa was actually a disguised image of Da Vinci himself. They even used X-ray to overlap their faces in order to prove what they thought they have discovered. I am not sure how much people are convinced of their finding.
The second picture is a photo. It was taken during WWII. In the picture an arrested French guerilla fighter is smiling bravely in the face of Nazi German firing squad. Standing in the rubble, the guerilla soldier's life might be ended right after the picture was taken, but he didn't care. The picture is so powerful that the smiling face has turned into my memory. We don't realize very often but it does take courage to keep smiling no matter what and, also, smiling does beget courage, too.
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