I drew. I did my best. You guessed. I presume you did your best as well, but friends, it wasn’t enough.

Here follows an accounting of your misbegotten efforts.

Here’s what I drew first. I took pride in this portrait. I think it is one of the least awful things I’ve drawn lately.

And yet, you collectively registered such far-flung conjectures as Jeff Goldblum. Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Tom Hanks, Colin Hanks, Noam Chomsky, Billy Crystal, Bernie Sanders, and “William Dafoe playing Fauci in a post-apocalyptic film about the end of the last race of humans before they mutated in the next evolution of humanoid.”

But many of you — SO MANY — correctly identified my drawing as being Dr. Anthony Fauci, or, as some of you put it:

• The man, the myth, the legend. America’s favorite immunologist, the one and only Dr. Anthony Fauci!
• Doc Fauci – the sensible one in the room.
• Fauci with the side eye!
• Someone still in the Drumpf Administration, judging by the worry lines all over his forehead.
• Antony Fauci trying to control his face during DJT’s briefings

Next I drew this. I felt not great about this drawing. I have regret, perhaps even shame. The subject deserved better, but I swear, I tried.

Let’s start with who I didn’t draw:

• That dude from Love Actually
• DRACULA
• Kirk Douglas
• John Waters
• Mick Jagger
• Christopher Walken
• Benicio Del Toro
• Willem Dafoe
• Raul Julia
• Bela Lugosi
• Benedict Cumberbatch? Or David Bowie
• Christopher Walken
• Robert Downey Junior!
• William Defoe
• WH Auden or Jorge Luis Borges
• Eugene O’Neill, playwright
• Lon Chaney jr
• Gov. Andrew Cuomo
• Christopher Walken
• Jack Nicholson
• Vincent Price
• Armand Frenjean
• Mr. Beeks, aka Paul Gleason
• Mayor Cuomo
• Milton Berle
• Michael J Fox in Teen Wolf
• Joe Biden
• Anthony Hopkins… or Dracula?
• William Dafoe

These other wrong answers filled me with delight, adding fuel to my determination to keep on drawing badly for all time.

• My mother in law
• Oh this is Jerry Stiller. Got it! I win!
• Yikes. Jamie Lee Curtis as an angel fish?
• Werewolf seems to be a good guess, but I’m going with Mickey Rourke
• Klaus Kinski upon discovering that the restaurant is out of the entree he’d ordered
• Liza Minnelli after two months of quarantine with no hair extensions, waxing, or Botox.
• Well it’s NOT Clint Eastwood
• Dame Judi Dench, but werewolfed
• Dame Judy Dench, you bastard!

But one. ONE! One glorious ONE of you correctly guessed “Maggie Smith as Professor McGonagall”

 

Which brings us to drawing #3. I don’t think I did so badly here. I mean, if I squint and tip my head sideways when not quite awake, I can kind of see the likeness to my source image. Kind of.

• Stephen King
• NEIL GAIMAN
• Slavoj Zizek
• Robert Downey Jr
• Jesse Tyler Ferguson
• Bob DeNiro
• Scraggly Bruce Springsteen?
• Benicio Del Toro, or some ghoulish spectre
• David Lee Roth after a night in jail
• Simon Cowell
• Oh! That guy that does the arty musicals with all complicated lyrics in them?
• Wolf blitzer
• John McEnroe
• Keith Richards
• Charles Bukowski
• Neil Pert, drummer from Rush
• John Krasinski
• Mandy Patinkin
• Neil Gaiman
• Keith Richards
• George Harrison
• Bruce Springsteen
• Robert Downey Jr
• David Letterman
• A middle aged Sean Connery
• Sondheim

I found these wrong answers quite pleasing/delightful/mildly upsetting.

• A highly intelligent writer man.
• Keith Richards wondering if the release of the Stones’ new album means they’ll have to go on tour AGAIN!
• Me by approximately 5:30 PM every day during Covid
• Bruce Springsteen crosses with a snub nosed monkey
• not a person at all either! but this ape is clearly related to Ernest Hemingway (sorry, apes)
• Oh god. This one is supposed to be obvious?  I think what is obvious is that we know different celebrities. And why is a floating hand attacking his face?!?  Clearly this is someone who missed his Botox because of the quarantine.
• I have no idea. But he should have gone to bed earlier last night.
• This is a good drawing. WTF is it doing HERE?

I am delighted to say that more than seven and fewer than nine people correctly identified my subject as Al Pacino.

And finally, this. Each week I try to draw one beautiful woman. Each week, the results are it is an unremitting tragedy. Please, someone who knows, why do I mangle the loveliest so? The question isn’t rhetorical.

There were quite a few votes for Catherine O’Hara. And I see it, I do. But no, friends no.

It also wasn’t:

• Renee Zellwiger
• Melania trump?
• BARBARA STREISAND
• Kellyanne Conway
• Courtney Cox
• Joan Rivers
• Madonna
• Kate McKinnon
• Phyllis Diller
• Barbara Streisand
• Christopher Walken
• Barbara Walters
• Cate Blanchett
• Glenn Close
• Tina Fey?
• Sarah Jessica Parker
• Glenn Close
• Paula Poundstone
• Kelley Ann Conway
• FLOTUS
• Sandra Bernhard
• Chelsea Handler

It also wasn’t:

• Christopher Walken playing Nancy Pelosi
• Shannon Doherty feeling very constipated.
• The Snell lady in the Netflix show Ozark discovering the shelves are wiped out of TP yet again

Not one single one of you guessed Rachel McAdams.

Do I blame you? I do not. The failure here is fully mine.

Friends, it is my intention to post four new drawings every Monday until I actually learn how to draw. Check back for more delight or despair, as the case may be.