Self-portrait
Saturday, July 1st, 2006
I finished this drawing this morning, just in time to include it in the display I have in the local library this month. (More on that in a moment.) As I mentioned in my previous post, I’d been fooling around in my camera, actually hoping to get a good shot of my mouth, to paint on a small, square piece of gessobord I bought a few months back. Well, I didn’t get any shots that would work for that, but I came up with a decent shot of my face that looked neat cropped to just my eyes. I was pretty intimidated by it–slightly larger than life size and mostly devoid of distinct lines and areas as it was. But I needed something else to put on the display, so I went for it.
I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I do think it bears some resemblance to me and the shading turned out better than I anticipated. I’m learning how to slowly build up much lighter layers of pencil, rather than going dark right in and trying to do a lot of blending. With the exception of the very dark darks, the softest pencil I used was an HB (your average #2 pencil, which falls right in the middle of the light/dark spectrum), and most of the drawing was done with an even harder pencil than that (H, if you’re interested). It tried my patience a bit, but I think it really helped keep the tones smoother and more subtle. It’s definitely an approach I’ll have to experiment with more.
The “official” title of this piece is “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman” (ha, I crack myself up). It’s 3.5×8″, done in pencil on smooth Bristol board.
And now, actually I have to go to work, so I’ll be back later with more info about the library display. (And hopefully a picture, eventually.)
