A self-portrait

Here are two first attempts at a self-portrait. Both are a little ‘skew-whiff’ – the wrinkles on the forehead of the first don’t sit quite right and the eyes in the second are oddly placed. I have managed to make the highlighting of the eyes quite realistic – but this makes the face in the second attempt a little disturbing.

But I enjoyed doing this exercise. I think at this stage of the course I appreciate having a completely willing model! I have avoided doing self-portraits up to now – it was the sort of thing I would draw as a teenager or young man so I felt a bit embarassed – but I am glad I left doing this to this penultimate unit. I think I appreciate better at this stage just how difficult a study like this is.

I have attempted to shade in the negative space around the face in the second drawing, but perhaps I could do more with this – perhaps use cross hatching to create more interesting texture there.

I did use the full range of pencils that I have – unfortunately I don’t have all the grades between HB and 8B and nothing harder than HB, but I feel now I should try and make best use of what I have and not try to always have exactly the right materials.