3 x Van Gogh

I made a lot of sketches of Van Gogh. Do you know what the problem was?
You have a picture in your head of what Van Gogh was like, but if you look at his many self-portraits, you don't see objective photos, but subjectively painted portraits.

Agreed, they all resemble Van Gogh in some way, but they never show the 'exact' person he really was.
If you focus on one portrait, you deviate very much from the other you focused on first.

In other words, you don't see Van Gogh, you see 'variations'. So you have to choose, which version do you want to go for? That doesn't make it easy to distil an honest caricature...
And so I ended up making 3 different versions!

Here they are.
And now, years later, I think I would have done it even differently! There are sketches that I apparently like more now than back then.
Conclusion: there are no hard rules, all decisions are partly based on taste and coincidence...

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APPENDIX:

Successive steps of the creation of version 3: pencil sketch - enlarged with photocopier - and inked...
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