Realistic Self-Portrait

Artist Statement: In this unit we created both a segmented value strip that showed the ability to demonstrate the value of graphite on paper and a realistic self portrait that used the shading values in it. The main idea that guided these pieces of art was the idea that realistic things have shadow and this is how you show depth and make things 3D. The value strip was kind of a warm up for the self portrait in that it was a way to get ourselves thinking about value and the different types of value that you can use to make things look realistic. The self portrait was an attempt at demonstrating that I could use these values in order to make a depiction of myself that looked accurate. The materials that were used to make these pieces of art were graphite. This sounds very simple, but actually graphite is very versatile. In the self portrait I used almost exclusively B pencils ranging from 2B to 6B to shade and draw the lines, and in the segmented value strip I used anywhere from 2H pencil to 6B pencil to make sure that I could really show the range that graphite has and the different values it can create. Making the Self portrait was unique because it was the project this year in which we most had to pay attention to our photo reference. Constantly aligning the photo with the paper was important because it helps to get the most detail as possible and make the portrait as realistic as possible. I also drew grid lines to make the daunting task of drawing a self portrait more simple, and step by step which is a concept that I have never used before and helped me draw a much better self portrait than I have in the past. In this unit I learned a lot about how shading can contribute to realism and how using different technical artistic strategies can help improve your art. It was a pretty fun unit!