Graphing Self Portrait

For this assignment, we were told to draw a self-portrait with pencils, charcoal or some other stuff if we wanted. I choose to do mine in charcoal, mainly because I love charcoal and don't use it a lot so why not practice with it. We also had to do a graphing method that we used in the mixed media project. Like always I took my time doing this, however, it didn't take nearly as long as the mixed media project. The things that I think could be improved is the nose, I couldn't get the right shading done, also the eyes were to open, they didn't look like they were squinting at all, but I loved the eyes I drew so I didn't have the guts to erase them, and last but not least that mouth! I just couldn't figure out how to shade them to make them not look like a plastic surgery gone wrong. My favorite part about this piece is the eyes at the same time as being a least favorite, I don't know why but they just seem to hit all the right buttons for me. I chose this image because my teacher was saying that she didn't want us to just take a "pretty" selfie she wanted a selfie that showed the true us or had a good composition to it. I thought this picture worked because it was one I took to look silly for my best friend. through the series of me wearing a plastic bag on my head with my mom's glasses on. I sent her like ten randomly weird pictures of me glaring at her in different ways. this one I ended up choosing for the project was my favorite.

(below is original image)