Signature Self-Portrait

This is my signature self portrait. It is a basic graphite self portrait except for one rule. Every line I made on the paper had to be my signature, my name written out. I chose, for most of them, to write out my full name in cursive. As my project continued on, my signature evolved into a more personal scribble kind of line instead of my name written neatly. In certain parts, like my eyes, i did not even write my whole name out, only my initials, JM.

I started by gridding a photo reference and gridding my paper. I started my project in the top left corner. It started out pretty slow. Each line being made very carefully, but soon it started going much faster. The facial features were very intimidating given their unique shapes. The grids were very helpful during this part. After I had covered the whole paper in signatures, It seemed very light. I chose to darken all the values. For the really dark values, like glasses, hair shadows, and the tongue, I used charcoal.

For the background, I originally was going to do black and white, but then decided to add color. I started with the left side. I had a few shades of blue. I started with one and wrote my signature in a straight line down. I then took the next shade lighter and wrote a straight line down next to it. I continued this until I got to the face. On the other side I made it completely yellowed colored the small portion of pattern in the photo blue as contrast. I then added red in the slightly darker areas of the side.