Graphite Self Portrait 

I chose to take a photo of myself at school in front of the Whitewall so I wouldn't have to draw any background things. I took about “a hundred photos” of myself before deciding on this one, but I like it because it's not just me staring dead into the camera but the photo shows some of my personality.

For my self-portrait, I used lots of shades of graphite pencils, 2H, 4H, 2B, 4B, and 6B. I made a grid on my reference photo with numbers on the sides and letters on the top and then did the same thing on the pastel paper I used to draw my portrait on. I did this so that my reference photo and my drawn self-portrait would be the same size I then went Square by Square from the top left corner to the bottom right corner tell I finished.

The first process I had to go through was choosing which photo of myself to use. I first tried to use a photo  I had taken in the past because I thought it would end up being better, but then I realized that I needed to take a photo with a white backdrop. After taking several photos at school I chose the one that stood out to me the most and use the grid technique. I used this technique because I thought that that would make the entire process of creating this art piece simpler than if I just dove into drawing the whole thing without going Square by Square.