Realistic Self Portrait

Artist Statement

For this project we were assigned to draw a realistic self portrait using the grid method. I decided to take my picture in front of a window to give my face a little more contrast and make it a little more interesting to draw. I personally don't like drawing portraits because I always have a hard time with proportions, but I found that it was a little easier using the grid method. Overall I don't think that this piece turned out too bad. I really liked how the eyes turned out, but the lips and the mouth not so much, even though they are where they are supposed to be relative to the graphed photo, they still look off to me and I think that I should go back and soften some of my lines.

The materials I used to create this piece were graphite pencils and white charcoal. I first used a 2H pencil to lightly sketch a graph to work with. I then used an assorted set of Pencils to fill in my graph, using 6B to fill in the darkest parts of my portrait, and using 2H or HB to shade my lightest parts of my portrait. After I finished features, such as my eyes, I went in with white charcoal to lighten the highlights. I used charcoal because I didn't have any other material with me at the time.

One of the biggest factors that contributes to making art realistic is proportions and spacing. To help make my portrait proportional I first divided my reference photo into one inch squares. I then transferred my measurements onto my drawing paper and divided it into the same one by one inch squares. Once I had my paper all graphed out I began going row by row filling in the squares, trying to match the values to those on my reference photo. I really like the contrast in my photo and I think that it made drawing my self-portrait a little more enjoyable. Im looking forward to using this graph technique in my future drawings!