Self Portrait

Giovanni 8 January, 2019

This is my self portrait that I have come to call "". This drawing is an example of shading and duplicating. The shading makes the drawing look very realistic. I drew this by using a photo reference. I had taken multiple pictures of myself ahead of time. I later went, picked my favorite and then cut up the remaining two pictures. I glued the cut up pieces onto the base drawing. This made the drawing look more complicated and make sure that there was a full range of value. I then drew a graph over my reference and drew an identical graph over my drawing paper. This way of drawing made it a lot easier to draw the entire picture, since the artist would only need to look at one square at a time which also makes the drawing more realistic.

I drew this self-portrait by using two different materials: graphite and charcoal. I used the graphite to sketch out each square on the graph before drawing over the graphite using charcoal. The charcoal makes the drawing look darker than a graphite drawing. I also had to make parts of the drawing darker than others and had to blend the charcoal to make the drawing have smoother, more realistic, look. To blend I used a tortillion, which is a "blending stump" or cylindrical piece of twisted paper. It was a lot easier to handle than the cloth that I had previously used to blend the marks and did not leave smudges on my hand. After I had finished my drawing, I started to work on the background. I had earlier looked up my name in Greek, which is Ioannes, and started to think about a Greek design for the background. I worked on the background with graphite before finishing it with charcoal. As a last touch, I added my name in its Greek spelling in the right-hand box at the top of my drawing.

I am very proud with my drawing, especially after comparing it with my original self portrait that I had made on September 13, 2018. However, there are a few things that I wish I had done better about my drawing. I wish that I had spent more time and had not rushed the background. The background is not even in some places and it is obvious that the background had been rushed. Besides the problems that I have with the background of my drawing, I have nothing else to complain about. I was especially proud of the fun way that I had cut out different parts of my face and glued them together. I thought that overall, this project was a fun and insightful experience. I hope that I will be able to do more of these fun facial drawings again in the future.