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Purpose:
To use the correct facial proportions to draw yourself as accurately as you can;
To draw the individual features, eyes, nose, mouth in a convincing 3D way;
To use the "grid" method to help you draw accurately;
To use charcoal and a stomp to show value changes and dimension.
Throughout the creation of my self portrait, I appreciated the advice my peers and teacher gave me on different parts of my drawing. A few examples of issues I faced while drawing were getting the proportions of my features right, like how I tended to draw my lips really small, but tried to increase their size as I got feedback from my classmates. Another problem I had was I couldn’t figure out how to add dimension to my face by shading without it looking like I had made big charcoal streaks around the outside of my face. To help with this issue, I used the strategy (that one of my classmates made up) of wrapping a cotton cloth around your finger, and then rubbing a little charcoal on the end of your finger and using that to create smoother shading.
The concept that instantly comes to my mind when thinking about what I've learned this unit is the importance of shading. This is the idea of, to create a realistic drawing, you must utilize the ‘darks’ and ‘lights’ of an object, because in real life, objects aren’t made up of just 2D lines, they have many shades of darkness and intensity, and shading is the only way to create natural and realistic shapes. This concept also includes using white pencil to create highlights and contrast. Another concept I learned was the process of transferring a drawing onto a different piece of paper. This process consists of tracing over your original drawing with transfer paper, flipping the transfer paper and making the lines more potent with graphite, and then tracing over the transfer paper again while it is on top of a new piece of paper. As well as being a useful skill, transferring a drawing can also help you notice asymmetry or odd shapes in your drawing. The concept that I believe to be most useful for myself in the future is the ideas or rules of general proportions for how the face is laid out. For example, the eyes are about halfway between the very top of the head and the chin, and If you were to split the space between the eyes and the chin into thirds the nose and mouth would lay on the lines separating the thirds. These rules are a very satisfying and trustworthy tool to make realistic portraits, and learning about little tricks/laws like these are some of my favorite ways to grow my art skills.
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