self portrait

This piece was one of my favorites to create. We were asked to photograph ourselves and use the grid technique to recreate our reference photos as closely as possible. I had never used the grid tool and until now, saw it as a kind of way of cheating, but now that I have tried it and realize how difficult it actually is to get proportions and lines correct in this way, I view it as a very beneficial and useful tool. I wanted to use just basic graphite to recreate my initial black and white image, which was definitely the right way to go and allowed me to practice techniques within that like using tortillons to blend and erasing for highlight. The actual image is a compilation of images I took of myself; a normal frontal view of my face, one in profile, and two images of my eyes, one angry and one with my eyes rolled back; which all made for a very interesting composition. The original assignment was to create the drawing I did, but using our signature as means to shade and create depth, but when I started that technique, it didn’t come out like I envisioned and I thought I would be happier with the outcome if I just went with blended graphite for the entire image. Clearly it is not quite finished yet, and I plan on working on it whenever I have free time, but even in its current state, it is one of the best pieces I think I’ve ever done and I am excited to see how drawing and shading the hair will differ from the face.

After many, many, many hours of working on this piece, I can happily upload the final product and announce that it was chosen by my teacher to represent our school on display in Portland Museum of Art! I am so extremely proud of this piece and of this exhibition and since then have had many of my pieces recognized for awards and such, which has made me so overjoyed and excited about my own art abilities. I can't wait to have the time to continue working on my skills and building a new personal style.