Realistic Self-Portrait

Artist Statement

The main idea that guided this piece was to draw myself as realistically as possible using shading. Also, the importance of shading and seeing the shadows and highlights in real life and copying them as best I can on paper.

The value strip was made with graphite on drawing paper and the self portrait was made with graphite on pastel paper.

The process for the self portrait was splitting the paper and the printed out picture of myself into squares. I then used a viewfinder to draw each square individually copying from the photo. I started off drawing lightly and then I went over with a darker pencil to show the shadows. I also used an eraser to slight erase parts to show highlight. I did no research for these drawings but I did redo certain squares in my self portrait when they didn't look right.