Realistic Self Portrait

Artist Statement: The goal was to make a realistic self portrait and although I was close in some aspects like my eyes were close enough that if I could’ve added highlights and shading then maybe they would’ve looked more realistic and more of what I was hoping for when doing this project. This project relates to my life in the fact that it shows a drawing of who I look at every day when I wake up. I chose to make it with little highlights because I thought it would be alright without too much shading and highlights. I soon realized if I would’ve spent more time on the shading and highlights and took more time.

I used graphite and charcoal on paper to hopefully make it look like a realistic self portrait of me. I also used the grid technique to put it into grid form and from there went grid by grid to make it look as realistic as I could but I believe that part of my problem was I was paying enough time on each block of the portrait.

I started with printing out the picture of me that I was going to use so I could have a larger reference than just my phone. From there I made sure the paper for my portrait was proportional and was the same size so I could get the lines down for my self portrait. Then as you know I used the grid technique on both the photo and my self portrait in order to try and get some defined lines in. My project went from being just a gridded piece of paper to a portrait of a young man who is ready to get better with his artwork and techniques. My next steps would be to pay more attention and work on it for longer and to get down the techniques so that I could really make it look like a realistic self portrait instead of a self portrait in general.