Above is some of the sketches of different parts of my face. For these sketches I used graphite pencils on the right side of the page, and charcoal on the left. I look a little masculine in some of the sketches. The features I found the most difficult was my eyes, trying to get the curve of the eyelids, and my lips. My lips are very dark in colour around the edges, and become pink as it gets closer to the parting, which is hard to sketch. I decided to a sketch of my lips whilst I was singing, as it is a habit of mine to have music playing whilst I sketch. It helps me to focus and relax whilst I'm sketching, and generally makes me feel calmer and happier, and therefore it seemed important for this to be recorded in my drawings.
Some of my quick sketches of my face, mainly in profile, mainly because that's how I sit when I'm doing my self portrait in the mirror.
As you can see, it took a while for me to get the shape of my head right. It's not often that you scrutinise yourself so much! I've recently had my hair cut quite short, which frames my jaw more, and made me think that my face was squarer than it actually is, when doing my initial sketches I drew myself with a very strong thick jaw, but it's not actually as prominent as I first thought. I'm still not good with the likeness of my model to the sketch in front of me; these sketches still don't look like me, but it's another case of the more I draw, the more I improve, and the more it starts to look like me. It was really bizarre drawing a portrait without a neck.
Drawing the portrait with a neck felt a lot more natural.
Had a bit of practise of drawing my face shape by this point, so these sketches didn't go too badly. I'm becoming familiar with the structure and overall shape, which means it comes easily to me, and I don't have to concentrate as much on it, which is massively helpful.
To give these descriptions context, here is a photo of me:
After the initial quick sketches, I moved onto some more detailed drawings so as to concentrate on the details as a whole.
Unfortunately I ended up making myself look like some atrocious monster, yet again. Very frustrating.
I'll have to do another sketch that justifies my features as opposed to the alien creature that is above. The problem I had with these sketches is that I went overboard with the shading, the first sketch I put too much dark tone in, especially on my right cheek, and the one above I didn't have enough range. For the above sketch I used the charcoal as the background shading, and put the features in using graphite pencils. My face isn't long enough. Let's hope the next attempt is more successful.
I think the reason I struggled so much with the self portrait is because I needed to have less tone. I know that I have had to repeat it over and over again, but "less is more" really does work. I think this is the best portrait I've done so far, it didn't take nearly as long as the others did, has far less cluttering up the sketch, and yet is the most effective.
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