I wanted to challenge myself to learn to draw a realistic portrait and facial features. I wanted to show the reality of a self portrait, and by stripping away to the bare essentials needed and still conveying self image and reflection, I was able to demonstrate that I didn’t need to include symbols or a background because I wanted to convey my image without distraction. I wanted to draw attention to the shading and depth of the portrait with a front facing expression and eyes on the viewer. In the realistic style, I wanted to convey emotion that taking a photo wouldn’t. I decided to do something different, since I have many pictures of me smiling, but not many of my resting face. I wanted a dramatic contrast between dark and light. This was mainly with my hair and skin, so I made sure to keep the hair and eyebrows dark, without losing definition of individual sections. The nostrils were looking out of place, so I made them darker, which really complemented the dark top lash line and brought the face together. I wanted to draw attention to the shading and dimension of the artwork. In my self portrait, I wanted to explore working with graphite in a realistic style, as it is a new medium for me. Working with a blending stump and solid graphite progresso pencils were skills I wanted to gain. The blending stump allowed me to shade and soften while the progresso allowed large sections of heavy pencil. As I have only ever used 2B and HB pencils to draw and shade, I wanted to use 4B and 6B in my portrait. I enjoyed exploring the softness and more intense dark of the 6B pencil, and mainly used the 4B for details around the eyes, which allowed me something more familiar to work with. I especially wanted to learn how to draw a nose, and the bridge of the nose, since it immediately makes or breaks a portrait. Investigating proportion was very important, as it decided the size of each feature. Investigating where each feature lay in relation to preset guidelines and then changing them to suit my face shape was a challenge unique to self-portraiture.