Are your characters real?

How do you build the feelings of your characters? Do you try to copy what you have seen in a movie, or are you writing from personal experience? I have kissed many women. From my experience, all lips feel different. I’ve asked myself, “Why do two people put their lips together?  I kissed a women once in a shaded area, and when we went into the light, I could see she had some hair on her upper lip. I’m a people watcher. After all the years since I kissed the women with hair on her upper lip, I still find myself looking at a women’s upper lip. Not that it’s a bad thing for a women to have hair on her upper lip, it’s just not the kind of lips I want to kiss. Some people kiss with their eyes open, some keep them closed, and others will take a peak. This got me to wondering, “What do people think about when they are kissing? I know what I think about…but I had no idea what the women were thinking about? I started asking women. “When you kiss a guy, what do you think about?”  They think about a lot of stuff. Guys more than not, stay on one track.
One of my stories was about a homeless guy. What do they do all day? How do they feel about their situation? What do they think about? I had no idea. So I packed my stuff away, took care of my bills for the next few month, told my family, and friends where I was going, and why. I went to a different town, and went out on the streets. I even road a fright train. I lived as a bum. I learned much. I saw how people treat bums. I could feel how people were looking at bums. I talked to other bums. That is a whole different world. After three months, I knew how my character should feel. What he was thinking, and  how he would do things.
How do you build your characters? I know a few writers try to copy what they have seen in the movies…but movies show a picture, they don’t need words. Writers have to build a picture in the readers mind with just words.  Do you have to know how something feels to write it, or can you fake it?
Test yourself:
A man is sitting in a field with his dog. The dog is licking the mans face. Write the scene: