Michael Drewett: Faceblind artist who specializes in drawing faces

[Music] Prosophecnozia, the inability to recognize faces occurs in up to 2% of the population. Most people struggle with it alone, unaware it even has a name. The stories in this podcast can be painful and hilarious. Join us for an exploration of the people, science, and realities of this condition. Maybe you have a hard time remembering faces. Come for the stories. Stay for the coping techniques. [Music] Our guest today comes from the future, as in he's already into tomorrow down under while I'm stuck here in yesterday's Rhode Island. No surprise really that he's face blind, but quite surprising that he's an artist who specializes in drawing faces. Michael Druett, welcome to the show. Thanks, Jeff, thanks for being on. Sort of a nice pleasure. So the first thing I have to ask, though I do know the answer, is Michael Druett, your real name? It is, yeah, for as long as I can remember, you get made fun of. But as soon as people find out you can draw, it's, oh, Mike Druett, yeah. And so you knew that you were artistic from an early age? Not really until high school. I'll say sort of about, you ate a night's appointment, it was about 13, 14. I always liked art, but that's when I discovered I could draw and found a love for fantasy art and went from there. But my mother's a very talented artist as well. Oh, what medium? She's a painter, mainly watercolor. Okay, so you had it around the house? Yes, definitely had art around the house, so that he's always good encouragement. You mentioned to me that you had not been to the States, but someday you hope to come to Comic Con. And after we had our discussion, I realized, okay, I think he meant more as an artist rather than dressed up as a character. Was I right on that? Yeah, both. Both. I would like to be there as an artist, but realistically, it would be as, I would like to be there as an artist, but realistically, it would be as just a visitor. I don't cosplay, but if you go all the effort to get over there, you have to cosplay something. Yeah, what would you dress up as if you had to be put on the spot to pick something right now? I'm not sure at the moment I'm working on a project with my daughter who does cosplay. I can't reveal what that one is, but it's a, I was someone to land themed one. I do do a good, sweetie Todd, but I have to go my hair long for sweetie Todd, because you need that messy, messy hair. But otherwise, it'd have to be someone tall and skinny. So whereabouts are you in Australia? And my geographical understanding is pedophile. I realize that after our discussion as well. Currently, right now, I'm sitting in my house in Coral Cove, which is on the coast of Bunderburg, about four hours north of Brisbane. But Brisbane is my proper base. I'm just here at the moment, we're actually selling the house. So I'm just doing ISO here. So you have some examples of your portraits behind you that obviously the audience can't see this, but and I've seen your website as well. These are realistic facial paintings for the most part. And mixed in with what does look like comic book art to me? Yeah, I try and do both photo realism portraits, pencil sketch, some always work off a photo or a movie scene, black and white. And then sort of go from there. So yeah, I thought I'd put some examples behind me. So whenever I'm doing video chat with someone, they can see my art. They are all portraits of people, but there's a lot of comic book characters there. I like doing my marble and DC characters. And there is another artist that, the only one other artist that I'm aware of so far that's face blind and does focus on the face, Chuck Close, who's an older gentleman at this point. And he did really large scale, but super photo realistic drawings. I think he's still alive actually. Yeah, I'm not sure. I know I'll be more than I know a lot about him. How does one whose face blind get into portrait artistry? For me, because I acquired my face blindness. So I had been doing lots of art. I used to do a lot of comic book type art, fantasy art. And then would have been five, six years ago, I think maybe touch more. Someone challenged me to do portraits. So just to try and get me back into my art, because I was just in a bad place at the time. And art's really good therapy. And at the time, Dark Knight, Joker was just one of the most popular characters in the comic book world. So that was my first portrait I did was Heath Ledger, Joker. And impressed myself and quite enjoyed it. So I saw your Heath Ledger, Joker. And I also saw the most recent Joker, Joaquin Phoenix. Joaquin Phoenix, yes. Yeah. So I think I saw both of those on your website and a variety of others, like actors who have played in the live action series. And for me, I am able to recognize someone, especially if they have pointy ears on or something like that. That's pretty distinctive. If I've seen them a thousand times in your media and the press and the movies themselves, but are you able to actually distinguish that that's Heath Ledger? Like, if you go back and look at the portrait that you've painted, can you tell it's Heath Ledger, are you working from a picture or how what is your process? Yeah. If it's a piece I've done, I know who the character is, which then helps know who the actor is. And it's why I predominantly do celebrities because there's a more familiar, familiar, familiar realization. A big word for a Sunday here. So my process from the start is I find, I have to find something that I like. And it has to be an image I like. I'll print it off in black and white or grayscale because once I work, I'm not looking at the whole face as I draw. So I'm just looking at the light in the shade or just the eye. And while I'm drawing, it's sort of funny. I sort of blur my vision of touch. So that helps. You're not so focused on one part, it just sort of blurs it. And then you're working up close, you don't realize it. And then you've got a step, usually you've got a step back about 12 feet to look at it properly. Even though I always work on a three or a four scale, I'm not sure if Americans use the same sizing. That's a sort of a standard sketch of size. Yeah, so all I know is like a standard sheet of paper is eight and a half by 11 inches. I think the A size is larger than that. Yeah, it's standard photocopy pipe, that's Eiffel. And I threes double. Okay. You know, I might have a little context for this. I have drawn exactly one facial portrait in my life. So for one of my anniversaries with my wife, I went to an art store and I bought this book, very thin, easy book titled How to Draw Real People. And it took you through some very basics. It was all pencil drawing. I mean, the first thing they had to do was spend an awful lot of time on a sphere and getting the shading just right. Yeah. So you draw the sphere and you figure out where your lighting is coming from. And I don't know the name of this device, but you had the pencil and then I had like a little cone shaped piece of paper that you would rub the pencil out to sort of spread it around a little more. A smudger. Yeah. Is that the real name? That's my favorite tool. Yeah. I think to have another name, but all I know is the smudges, like rolled up, rolled up, like a truly magical. Yeah. A truly magical, what you can do with that, you know, you have this hard edge and you get to play with that hard edge and make it more and more real. So I understand that the method that they taught in this book as well was find a photo that you want to replicate and draw a grid on top of it. And then you take one block. grid at a time and only concentrate on what's in that grid and try your best to sort of match what's in that. So that was the method that I went through and I was able to actually take a wedding photo of my wife and we still have that framed on the wall here somewhere so she loved it. But I think that I also understand what you mean by sort of therapeutic and it was you can lose yourself in that. It took me a week or two of an hour a day working on this thing to get it anywhere in here and I never got the nose quite right. But I enjoyed it, I enjoyed the process and then I stopped after that so I did not continue. I definitely don't have the bug to keep doing that but it's interesting to think about from a face blind perspective dividing faces up into little quadrants like that. And I find that when I'm trying to recognize someone new oftentimes I think maybe I'm kind of doing that you know like I'll zone in on just the nose or just the left half and then the last left half of the nose or an eye or the way an eyebrow arches. Yeah. Yeah because I have my biggest problem is that triangle. So the eyes to the mouth that's the biggest part I have trouble focusing on and taking in so I used as a whole. So when you do it I'll just be working on one eye. Then you stop that eye then you work on the other eye then might be half the nose. Yeah just bit by bit but never look at the whole thing. It's so it's more looking at the shadows it's all throwing rather than say like the nose itself you don't draw the nose you focus on the shadow that the nose throws because yeah noses aren't fun to draw. So when you started drawing did you have a hard time focusing on faces in order to be able to draw them or or you said you had acquired prosa pegnosion somehow did you start drawing before or after that. Before hand I had done very few faces I never liked doing faces always struggled so that's why I mainly did fantasy work or comic art cars I like doing sort of all muscle cars and classic cars. So yeah I'd had always avoided doing faces so it's sort of a funny evolution. And how old were you how old were you when you discovered that you were face blind or it was roughly on trying to think how long I've been up in Thunderbird because it was at the point where we just moved from Brisbane to Thunderbird because that would have been about I think it's say 10 11 years ago maybe 12. Oh so definitely acquired though you didn't have this as a child. No I had a short-sighted that was it. We had one other example on the show I believe of someone with acquired most other people seem to have had it from birth and that came from a pretty nasty hit on the head. Do you know like did you hit your head do you know how this happened? Yeah wait to this day I still don't know exactly how it happened but from all the tests so I'll explain the process that probably easier okay because we moved up to Thunderbird and I didn't know anything had changed and when you sort of move into a new town you don't know anyone anyway and it's sort of you spent a lot of time knowing this ain't going to town a bit picked up a part-time job and after a while they come home I'd come home to the wife and to say we've moved to a strange town everyone looks the same it sounds funny but it's like it almost felt like the town was inbred because it looked very similar and at that time because you sort of not socialising we were getting a lot of movies out and I became the most frustrating person to watch movies with because I had to constantly ask who's the actor who's the actor is I just sort of a starter noticed myself something wasn't right and then we went back to Brisbane and we were in a shopping center and I was off doing something if the kids came back my wife was talking to someone I didn't know who they were so as you do you just stand politely beside them and don't interrupt now we're talking for about good 15 minutes and then went and then afterwards my wife just turned around shazza what did you say hi and it's like I didn't know who it was you thought someone you might have known from the past and it turned out it was the sister of my best friend that I'd known for over 30 years wow and that's when she just looked at me and went yeah you have a problem and that night we were dinner with friends and I didn't really recognise my friends how I used to know they looked like and we were telling that story because yeah my good friend who's sister who was there he was there and someone else had not long read the book the man who mistook his wife for a hat yeah so she just said straight away you need to go see a doctor and get tested you got it sounds like you've got this and that started all the testing which played for close to 12 months to work out went to the GP because you started your doctor he just looked at me and he thought I was paranoid schizophrenic didn't believe you well the one I said everyone's looking the same I'm not recognising people he didn't look no he didn't believe me and he sent me to a ophthalmologist to get my eyes tested and the ophthalmologist it's like your short side there's nothing wrong she wanted to know what the problem was and she goes you've got face blindness you need to go see a neurologist and once I talk to the neurologist he looked at me went okay yep one is first thing they needed to do was work out if there was any brain damage so rather than see if I was face blind was more about seeing if there was a tumor had a stroke okay it's like tickle for all the bad things and then the final thing was to go get the all the cognitive testing I think it is so you do all the puzzle soul in a no IQ test and the facial recognition test and eventually I said yeah your face blind and through all that and you got to recall anything where something might have gone wrong not long before we moved up to bundaburg one night I stepped out of a room and everything blacked out and I fell backwards and hit my head on tiles and it was that loud it woke it woke someone up but I was out cold for quite a while I can still remember the sound of the crack my head made and they think yeah that just caused a small bleed and that was the most likely situation but they didn't see in like the imagery of your brain an obvious bleed area no there's no sign of a bleed or a stroke but they could definitely tell that there was damage at some point so 10 years ago you're well into adulthood right you have children roughly how old are your kids at this time at this time so if you go back to a 10 12 years so the eldest would have been eight or nine probably right down to like a two three year old so I'm bad with ages my kids that's bad parenting one night but yeah they were all primary school well not even at primary school and so they and your wife knew you when you were able to interact let's say normally with the public and recognize people and then they see dad walking around having no idea who his sister's best friend is for example and did they start to notice it as well it sounds like your wife did but did the kids notice it too not that I can recall but we're pretty open with our kids so pretty early on we were telling them to go if we walk around the shops and dad looks last you've got to go up to him and that does happen so they're good now they help me identify people out and about or they're used to me saying yeah someone walks past you think I know them but I'm not sure so they're quite used to me asking so do I know them and and that all they'll point people out for me so yeah that they've been really good that way how how how did that impact your ability to recognize your wife and kids like did you note that immediately after this event you had trouble recognizing your wife and kids too or and I assume you could recognize them as well as anyone else before the event? Yeah, it's because you'd see them every day. You don't notice that change. It's sort of a funny one and the context as well. But when the kids are at school and they're in school uniform, it's almost impossible for me to pick them out. That took a long time. So that's where our kids were told early. So if dad's picking you up from school, you've got to go to him. Because he won't, you've got a hundred, hundreds of kids around all wearing the same uniform and a hat. That's where I'd lose them or in shops. So I can recognize my wife while I'm walking around with it. But if I lose her at the shops, that's really hard. But she's got really fuzzy hair. So I just look for the really curly hair. That's amazing though. The same situation 11 years ago, you would have no trouble recognizing her in the shop. And then 10 years ago, overnight almost, you would have a hard time picking her out. And now you're starting to instinctively develop some of these skills like, okay, let's pay attention to the hair more. Did that happen naturally or did some of these doctors who, luckily, had even heard of face blindness, did they give you some tips or some strategies to follow? I'd say I got most of my strategies myself. Because sort of once I was told what I had, that's it. I just started and see a specialist anymore. There's no counseling or anything like that. It's like, here's your prize. Go home and enjoy it. That sort of sensation. See, a lot of it's just learning. You got to learn. And yeah, so the biggest one you pick up on is hair styles. Change of hair styles is never fun. Like even like beard shaving. I do have a situation. I can shave my beard off and I don't recognize myself in a mirror. Not the same person. I find photos harder, strangely enough to recognize people I know. Yeah, otherwise you find a voice, how people talk, and strangely enough, how people walk. I can spot someone in a crowd. How they walk. Yeah, gestures and that sort of thing. I was thinking about the example of your daughter at school. My daughter's did go to a Catholic school. For a while early on when they were much younger. And I could totally visualize what you're talking about. Everyone's wearing the same uniform. But I did note that I could recognize my kids. Easily from a distance, actually, where you can't even see their face. Just based on the way they walk. Yeah, the further away someone is, the easier it can be. Yeah, agree with that. That's really interesting. Wow. So as opposed to most of the people who I've spoken with, who were probably born with this and naturally develop some of these tips and techniques or skills, coping mechanisms over time, probably subconsciously. You're like, they're not actively even aware that they can't recognize faces. Because it's just their reality. But in your case, you had the disadvantage of not having a whole lot of time. But the advantage of knowing what this was, like in an instant. Maybe it took a year for the full diagnosis to come through from some of the doctors. But now you can go attack it now that you know what it is. But you have to learn all these coping mechanisms very quickly. And maybe just knowing, okay, knowing more about it and maybe it's a little bit easier to develop those. I did find too, I didn't have a big social circle, especially being in new towns that definitely helped a lot. Because I do suffer with anxiety as well. So that definitely didn't help. Especially if you're in big crowded areas and whatever that made me more anxious, and that it was probably harder to deal with all the emotional psychological sides of it than the actual problem itself. Oh, did the anxiety issues precede this? Yeah. Okay, so you had already been dealing with that and this made it worse, I would assume. Yeah, I didn't know how that I had bad anxiety. That's something that's happened over time. But the face blindness definitely, that diagnosis came with a couple of other health issues at the time. So it was just like a snowball effect. And the face blindness was probably the easiest one to deal with. Because you've got an answer, you know, it's not going to kill you. It's not going to get better like it worse. But that was the end of it. Sort of quirky. It was different. Yep. Because you just think of the funny stories. You don't think of the bad ones. So most of the art that you've done, a lot of these portraits that we touched on at the beginning of the interview came after your diagnosis. Did I get that timeline right? Yeah, I'd probably been face blonde for at least five years before I started doing portraits. I said just to help with all my things, whatever everyone was trying to get me back into my art, because I hadn't done in the art for quite a while. And got back into a pile a couple of years or a year, say before I started knowing portraits. Because of mine in town that had a shop wanted me to put some art in and said you should really do portraits. And that's so people keep saying it's like your face point. At least we got an artist who can do portraits. It's just a selling point. Yeah. And are these contract portraits then where people bring you a photo and say could you reproduce this? Or are they looking for portraits of famous people, movie actors, that sort of thing? Most the ones I do or ones I want to do. Sort of try and pick what people would like or I ask for suggestions. I'm really bad if someone asked me to do a specific one I can procrastinate really well. And when it's a commission piece there's more pressure on you to do a really good job. Well when you're doing it because you want to do it, you don't mind if you get it wrong. Where that I do do commission pieces. It just depends what they're after. And if it's of a family member, for me there's more pressure because I don't know if it's going to look right. And you want them to look at it and just straight away have a memory of the person that wanting you to do. But luckily every single commission I've done for someone they've loved it really happy with it. So it's all you can sort of ask for is when you do a piece they like it. And you describe yourself as an unassuming artist. This is how you make a living today although we're in the midst of COVID-19 here and all bets are off for most things. How has that impacted you these days? Yeah at a moment because I'd normally try and do markets and things like that. So none of that's happy or they might be starting to happen but I'm choosing not to. Just don't want to take the risk of sort of catching anything. So yeah for me it's just stopped but our government's giving good support for people not working which really helps. They're not giving any support to the art community but there is that sort of social security fall back there. But I've got to feeling once everything gets back to a new normal I can see art will really pick up again because people are just going to want that enjoyment. Whether it be film, TV, painting sort of it's art that puts a smile on everyone's face not sort of economics. Are you able to digitally find an audience or a paying audience let's say? I try. I've old fashioned I like I still like face to face. Still in that. I've had my Facebook page as you know I have an Instagram account. My Twitter account that sort of I put my art up there but I use that for personal stuff as well. So I try not to use Twitter to sell anything. I set up an Etsy store but sort of postage costs outside of US. No so I outside of Australia can get expensive so that makes it hard because I like to keep my sort of, I see behind me my postcard prints, they're easy to post and quite affordable, but when you get to the bigger prints, that's trickier to post without it getting damaged. And I see in your art there's, there is both photo realistic and as we talked about, there's also the comic style, I'm not sure what to call that, I guess just comic book style, right? So it's less photo realistic. Yeah, most of them are generally more like a photo, but there might be one there like, you occasionally do one where you just, all you're doing is you're simplifying your shading, and keep it more black and white, some more harsh lines as a postcard supply, but there's also a variety you can sort of see from my early work to my later work. There's a transition of being more, yes, so it's comic like to get in that softer, softer tone or a finder actually getting darker with a lot of my work. Yeah, there's another interesting thing that I sometimes use. The best example is have you ever seen the single line drawing of John Lennon? So he's got the distinctive eyeglasses and the nose. That's the extreme of what we're just talking about, right? There's only a single black line that makes the whole portrait, a curvy line, right? But to me, I look at that and I immediately know, oh, that indicates John Lennon. It's simple, but it's detailed, if that makes sense, the right details are there. Right. Do you find that you're able to apply that logic in recognizing people today? So someone new on the street or some new friend that you're trying to memorize? Do you think there's any value or what kind of value might there be and trying to envision a line through the most distinctive features? I don't know that this works. It just occurs to me that if I can see the John Lennon, maybe there's a way to architect a single line through the key features that might be useful in improving the facial recognition. Yeah, John Lennon's a good example because they're iconic glasses. So everyone knows those as the John Lennon glasses. So you see a picture of him with them, especially if he's got the long hair, you know it's John Lennon. Where, or recently, I watch a documentary on the Beatles. I have trouble distinguishing the Beatles except for Ringo. Ringo stands out because he's got a big knife. Then he's shorter. Right, yep. So that's what I use more is if someone's got unusual nose or they might have really big, high cheekbones or narrow jaw, that makes it really easy. But you find when someone's younger, it's harder because their face is smoother, the skin softer. But as they get older, you get more distinguished wrinkles and sort of age lines. That's very interesting. Yeah, if we take the Beatles as an example, I totally agree with you. If you think back to their very early popularity, they all had a very similar haircut. Yes. And there are many pictures where they're not wearing glasses at all, I guess. And they're basically wearing the same outfits too. Yeah, they're older at the same. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's very, and they're younger and you're right. They have the smoother facial features where later time takes us all. You know, certain features get more angular and pronounced. Yeah. And they got their individual style. That in their career, you can see that progression of style and their fashion and style. Yeah, sort of not letting them manage your dress and they dress themselves. So in such a short period, you found out what this was. You realized that you recognized it. How did socializing change for you? And I can only imagine that maybe you would want to push away from getting into social situations where you might make a mistake or just have the extra anxiety of trying to remember faces and knowing how hard that is or maybe impossible that is. Did you push away from social situations after that? Yeah, it's sort of like I like to go out. Like I still look like I went for Friday drinks and things like that. But generally I was sort of a shy person anyway, but I did keep more to myself. So go somewhere. I will go to the same seat every time I go somewhere. Sort of go to the same venues so you get that repetition of people. Sort of that context. But yeah, if I get invited to go somewhere where I don't know anything, I generally don't want to go or I'll find reasons not to go. Or you sort of turn up and wait for someone to find you. I just, yeah, sort of very awkward going up to someone going, are you the person I'm looking for? And you know they know you. So I would say I definitely noticed that was the biggest change in me is not wanting to be at large social settings for quite a while. Well you were lucky too that you had at least one person in your group of friends when this happened who had read the book. The man who mistook his wife or hat, you know another hat tip to Oliver Sacks on this podcast. You hadn't read it, right? You said one of your friends read it and said, hey mate, I think this is what you have? Yeah, so and then put me on to it. So I got a copy of the book. So that was yeah, the very next book I read sort of once I got back home from that trip, I read the book and went, okay, there's one story in here that I can relate to because it went into a lot of other problems. But yeah, if it wasn't for that, I think I would have gone crazy. Well, at that point, I mean, it seems pretty unusual that people, the general public has even heard of this. And so now you've got a group of friends who knew you before and now you're coming to them and saying, hey, I have this problem. If I see in the grocery store or the market, I may not recognize you. How did they react to that? Were they believers? Were they skeptical? What was that like? About most people you talk to might be a little bit skeptical because they haven't heard of it before. And there's nothing about you that says there's a problem like to see. So it's always harder for someone to perceive a problem they can't see. But sort of all my friends and family were very accepting, very good. So as friends do, especially guys who don't have a long time, they'll make all the jokes they can. That actually helps because that means they're actually trying to process it and that my family were really good. Just took, if I took longer to explain what the problem was for them to understand it because you always, you say to someone on, if someone introduces himself and you'll say, okay, next time I'll see you just point yourself out because I don't recognize faces. I won't remember your name. So if I can't put a name to a face which I can't, it's hard to remember it. And this immediate response will be, oh yeah, I have trouble remembering names too. I know what it's like. Everyone says that and we all check all. If you're listening to this podcast and just out of curiosity and you don't have face blindness, I mean, this might be the one marker where we can, I don't know. I don't identify each other because you know, I know that phrase and I know how it makes you feel. You say, hey, you know, it's clinical. I have a, I have a neurological condition called prosofact nausea that makes it very difficult for me to remember visualized faces. And then they hear that almost no matter how you put it or how quickly you say it, there's a high percentage of people there next statement is, oh yeah, I'm terrible with names and faces too. And it's definitely not the same thing. Yeah. And when I, when I'm doing a marker or something, I actually have a little sign that says I'm a face blind artist because it is a good selling point. Yeah, it is. But it does in, in vocal lot of inquiries. So you do spend a lot of time trying to explain it. It's amazing how many people try and tell you how to cure it. That it's probably just a psychological problem. No, so I'll get rid of it. It's so, yeah, you don't just get that. I have trouble remembering names. You'll also get all the weird theories on how to fix it. But I'd say generally 90% of people are generally interested and want to know more. So, yeah, for me, I'll use it as a selling point, but it's also a good education because it just helps get that awareness out there as well. So one other thing that's difficult here, I think, is to quantitatively assess how faceblind you are with this acquired prosopagnosia. Is that how you say it, by the way, prosopagnosia or do you say prosopagnosia? Now you should say prosopagnosia? Prosop. Okay. Yeah, I was speaking with a guest from New Zealand and I think she pointed out that I was putting the hard O in, which is incorrect. So, I struggle with trying to correct that. But anyway, the question I wanted to ask was, over the last 10 years, to what degree have you noticed any change, either improvement or devolution, improvement or it got worse, or has it been pretty flat? Definitely hasn't improved. So, because I've gone from the shock of every face how I remembered it looked, changed. So it's getting rid of faces how you remembered and trying to sort of go with the new face. So my wife doesn't look like the wife I married. There's a difference there. At the time, I think it is gradually getting worse, but my ability to find other ways to recognise people has improved. So, it feels like a flat line, but I know it's getting worse and I sort of come back to because I'm sort of in isolation at the moment when I go back sort of into the real world, I know I'll have trouble again because I haven't been seeing people all the time. I am, yeah, so we're in the middle of COVID-19 lockdowns. I can relate to your story in one way. I'm very curious about this. So I believe that I had COVID-19 back in February timeframe before there was a lot of reporting on it, at least here in the States. And I think that because I distinctly remember losing my sense of taste and smell. And I mean, I'm an engineer by degree, so I had to test this theory. One night I got, I noticed it at first with Wasabi on some sushi. You know, didn't impact me. I took a small piece and then I took a much larger piece and that took a huge chunk. And, you know, my first thought was, okay, this restaurant has bad wasabi. And then the next night I tested that, we got Indian food and the lady said, scale a one to ten. What do you want? I should take it two, but I decided to take an eight and I couldn't taste it at all. But I could clearly remember what those tastes should be like. And so I'm curious how this plays out for you. Take your wife, for example. So this is a face that you were able to visualize in your mind. You could close your eyes at any time prior to acquiring pro-Sapaknauja. Yeah. You could visualize your wife, correct? Yes. And after, can you still visualize what her face looked like back then? I find, as the years go on, I'm finding harder and harder to sort of have that recollection of what people look like. Um, sort of, you get ones like my grandparents and my parents. I can, you know, memories in that. And I do have, with my wife, memories, but if I'm more of what she looked like when we first dating, that's the memory I have. And then sort of, we've been together over 20 years. So you've got to change a lot over time. Um, then I have memories of what I should look like. And I still don't think I look like what I should look like. Um, that's how I know it's getting worse. Because it's like, I can give you a sort of a funny moment where when I told this story to told it to my wife the first time, she just cracked up. So it was just just before lockdown happened in Brisbane and they said everyone, yeah, they shut everything down. I was at a little bar with my daughter for an art thing. I'm just having a few beers and that. And I've gotten up and I've gone into the restroom. And as I've walked in, I've been in the door and I've seen this person coming from the right of me and I've stopped when I was sorry after you. And they didn't move and they guessed you'd for me to go after them. And then I realized I was looking at a mirror. That's when I was like, yeah, it's not getting better at all. She was like, wow. I didn't even pick that it was a person wearing the same clothes and everything. So even coming back, I had to double check that it was a mirror and I hadn't imagined that it was a mirror. So it's, yeah, it's going to be a bit daunting getting back into the scene sort of once it's all sort of up and going. Well I hope it does at some point. Australia is definitely on my bucket list. I've been all over the world. I'm still missing all of Asia in Australia. But it's there. So maybe one day you can show me an authentic Australian pub. Oh, not a problem. So the Queensland is a place to come because they're a bit sunny, a bit warmer. But yeah, definitely try and get out. It's sort of some of our bars be a very different experience. I'm definitely sure of that. Great. Well, Michael, I really appreciate you sharing your story here today. Where can people find your art? If they want to go see what you're producing as a face blind artist, portraits as a face blind artist, where are the best places for them to see some of that? So that either go on to Facebook or Instagram and just look for Michael G. Druitt Art and that'll come up. My little logo icon is just a guy with a goody holding a big pencil to sort of like a chubby style. I think I have that on Instagram at the moment, but that's the best two ways to find me. Well, great. If you'll send me those, I'll include it in the show notes and people can just click through on those links too when we're done. Stay safe, wear a mask. Yes. And hopefully one day we'll be through this. Thanks again. Cheers. Thanks for having me on. For more info on this episode or prosophecnozia in general, visit faceblindpodcast.com. Thanks for listening.