I was an adorable kid. My little button nose combined with my big sticking-out ears and tousled hair guaranteed “awww”s wherever I went. All of my baby pictures are, frankly, so cute you could vomit.

Then I hit puberty. My nose was neither little nor button-like, my hair took on new levels of tousledness, and my ears… well, they stayed the same. I was no longer sweet and adorable, I was… AWKWARD.

But my features eventually congealed into a static position, forming what you now know as Elise, webmistress of bottledair.org. I may not be cute enough to make you vomit anymore, but at least I’m not ugly enough to make you vomit anymore, either. My face has gone through a lot. This is its story.

THE CUTE YEARS

Zero years old	One year old	Two years old
Three years old	First year of preschool	Second year of preschool

click to enlarge

I’m usually hesitant to draw with a pen, especially a non-ballpoint one, because of obvious reasons: you can’t erase, you can’t really control the heaviness of the line, and did I mention you can’t erase? Unless it’s an eraseable pen, which is just wrong on so many levels.

Anyway, I needed to loosen up one night so I took out my trust Pilot Precise and sketched this out in about five minutes. I seem to be vaguely smiling, which is a nice change of pace from the usual intense glare I have in self-portraits. And I think I finally managed to draw convincing fabric creases in the shirt.