Self portrait

Artist statement:

For this project we had to take a photo of ourselves and draw it, then for the background, make something we were inspired by. First, I found a photo of me from the summer that best showed every part of my face, including the freckles I try to hide; then I played with the grayscale to make my photo have both darks and lights. After that, I printed it out, gridded it, and started drawing. In the beginning, I drew from the bottom up square by square then realized it may look better if i didn't do it like that for the face part. Materials utilized in this drawing were pencils, watercolor, and the pencil blender. One strong part of my drawing would be the detail and the values. Something I could work on is making the bottom of my drawing look more smooth and not so much with squares, also the right side of my face is kind of close together between the eye and the nose. The background was inspired by Kehinde Wiley, I chose him because when I took photography, I was inspired by him as well and I really like the way he does his work with the background; realistic but not at the same time, and colors that wouldn't really go together, he puts them together. The story behind this drawing is to show all the details of my face and shows me as a person, and the background kind of shows my personality because it's something I really like. If there was something I could change about this and redo it would be my hair, it doesn't look realistic and it kind of looks like strands of yarn.