Gridded Self Portrait

For this assignment i was given; i was to draw a gridded self portrait. I started off by choosing my photo, as you can see from the photo below, I wanted to do a goofy picture of myself. I choose this photo of me wearing a face mask and then printed my picture. After I printed the photo, I gridded the photo and measured it to make sure it was the same as my drawing paper. I then gridded the photo as well as my drawing paper. This gridding technique was used to focus on just one small portion of what you are drawing, and that way it looks for realistic because you are drawing exactly what you're seeing.

For this process, I only used a regular pencil for the first part and used colored pencils at the end of my project. Although we were supposed to just draw square by square, I decided and found that it was easier to do the out line of myself. After I drew the outline, I continued to draw square by square.

One struggle I had in the process of making the gridded self portrait was when I was drawing the eyes, I couldn't make them the same size nor make them look very realistic. I retried many times and the eyes were till very different. Another struggle I had was, making the shadows look realistic and not just random dark spots. Other than that I am proud of my artwork and the way it turned out. Especially because it was a self portrait which I am usually very bad at but I think I learned a lot from that project which is why I am better now.