The Faces I Can’t Let Go

The Art of Listening to Characters

There’s a point when a story, or a face, settles into your mind and refuses to leave. As an author and an artist, that’s the point where things get interesting.

I’ve got characters, stories, entire towns rattling around in my head, each one itching for their turn. But it’s never as simple as sitting down and getting them out. They’re more than names and places; they’re voices, expressions, a glint in the eye I can’t quite capture until I’ve spent enough time with them.

Each character has a story, a deep hurt, a lasting love, something they need to move past or something they need to share. It’s not always easy to put it into words or lines on a canvas. Sometimes, I’ll draw the same face five or six times before it starts to look like the person I see in my head. It’s not just about lines and shading, it’s about the quiet stories written in the tilt of a chin or the furrow of a brow.

I see faces everywhere: at the coffee shop, in the back corner of a photograph, or in that fleeting dream right before I wake up. Some of them belong to the people around me, strangers I brush past in the grocery store, old friends who still linger in the corners of my mind. Others just appear, faces that seem to come out of nowhere, demanding to be known, to be seen.

The other day, I saw this guy at the farmers market, he was older, weathered, with a kind of quiet intensity in his eyes that stopped me in my tracks. The more I watched him, the more I knew I had to sketch him. I couldn’t help it; there was something about him that spoke of a life lived in the hills and hollers, a story written in every crease and every line.

As I watched him, listening to him speak and smile, he kind of looked over at me, like he was wondering why this lady was staring. And in that moment, I wasn’t just seeing the lines on his face or the way his shoulders bent just slightly toward his wife. I was thinking about the person he was. His wife was there with him, helping him at the market stall. I wondered about their relationship. How long have they been married? Do they have kids? Grandkids? What was he like when he was a little boy? What hurts has he gone through?

His smile was easy, his hands gentle as he moved in and out of the crowd, past his wife and over to the produce. There is so much more to a person than how they look—we all know that. And that’s what I’m drawn to: the stories behind the faces, the lives lived in quiet moments and in shared laughter, in the wrinkles and the gentle curves of a hand.

That’s the thing about creating: it’s as much about listening as it is about doing. The characters and faces that stay with me are the ones that refuse to be silenced. They’re the ones that keep showing up, day after day, even when I try to push them aside to make room for something else. They have a kind of stubbornness to them, a refusal to be forgotten.

In my stories, I try to honor that. I give them space to breathe, to tell me who they are and what they want. Sometimes it’s a whisper, other times it’s a shout. Either way, it’s a conversation, and I’ve learned to trust that process.

When I’m painting, it’s much the same. I’ll start with a rough sketch, a simple line or two. But the face I see in my mind rarely matches what ends up on the page the first time. So I go back and start again, again and again, until the person starts to emerge. Until I can see the stories they’re carrying etched into the lines around their eyes.

It’s a kind of relationship, really. You get to know these characters, these faces, bit by bit. You learn their quirks and their secrets, the way they move through the world. You start to understand what they’re holding onto and what they’re trying to let go of.

Sometimes it’s frustrating. Sometimes I’ll spend hours on a single drawing or a single scene, only to realize it’s not quite right. But I’ve come to see that as part of the work. Because in those moments, when it’s hard and you’re tempted to walk away, that’s when the real magic happens. That’s when you find the heart of the character, the soul of the face.

There’s something deeply satisfying about that, even when it’s hard. It’s the feeling of finally seeing the person you’ve been chasing in your head, finally hearing the words you knew they had to say. It’s like finding an old friend in a crowded room, someone you’ve known forever but are meeting for the first time.

The thing is, I don’t think those characters or faces ever really leave you. Even after the story is finished or the painting is done, they’re still there, a part of you. They become a kind of shorthand for the parts of yourself you’ve put on the page or the canvas, the hopes, the fears, the quiet truths you didn’t know how to say out loud.

And maybe that’s the best part of it all. Because in the end, every story I write and every face I draw carries a little piece of who I am. It’s a way of connecting, of saying, “This is what I see. This is what I feel. Maybe you see it too.”

So for now, I’ll keep listening to the noise in my head. I’ll keep sketching and writing and trusting that eventually, these characters, these stubborn, beautiful faces, will find their way out. One word, one stroke at a time.