I'm also working on putting my portfolio together for college 'cos dammit, I want my BFA. So I want to do something that I could include in a portfolio -- I'm thinking of working traditionally.
It's been a very long while since I've painted my self-portrait. I still do self-portrait drawings, 30 minutes, no erasing. It's something I picked up from Evil Professor Rex, and I actually really enjoy it. It was something he had us do for homework in his life drawing class, and it's also something that he critiqued us very strictly on. He critiqued us on likeness as well as technique -- his background is very academic, artistically speaking, so he wanted us to draw as objectively as possible.
I'll admit, I was afraid of doing my self-portrait before I took his class. There's something about it that's fraught with issues, especially if you identify as an artist. Like many women, I have issues with the way I look, but after looking at myself in the mirror once or twice a week to translate what I see onto paper, I've discovered I'm okay with the way I look now. And when you identify yourself as an artist, there's also that whole set of baggage that comes along where not only do you have to draw yourself, you have to do it WELL because you're an artist, not a five year-old with a box of crayons. No pressure.
So here's a progression of my self-portraits, starting from my time in Rex's class to the ones I do now on my own. I'm only including the ones I think are better, because it's my blog and I get to curate things here, but these are the ones I'm happy with. Later I'll put up some of the self-portraits I did in his painting class, which was a whole new kettle of fish entirely.
Yes, you're going to see my construction lines. Like I said earlier, we weren't allowed to erase. I never understood some of the students who did surreptitiously erase -- missing the point entirely. It's good training to (1) put your initial marks down lightly, which is something I think I'll always need to work on, but also (2) it trains you to choose where you put your marks down, 'cos once it's down, it's down. It's worse when you work in pen, which Rex would have us do sometimes -- but I like working in pen because you can't erase. You have to put your marks down with confidence, or they suck.
For the most part, these were done in thirty minutes, no erasing, in pencil. The very first one, August '09, was the very first one done for Rex's class, and it's done across two pages of sketchbook, which was something I did a lot of at the time. The one next to it, September '09 was actually 45 minutes, and we were permitted to erase, which made me all kinds of happy! The very last one, dated September '11 was done in black Prismacolor Verithin, which I really enjoyed working with.
You're not seeing the ones where the proportions are uber-squirrelly, or the ones where the technique was really bad, or the ones that were really unflattering . . . well you get the idea.
So right now I'm doing the self-portrait drawings more often as a warm-up for the self-portrait painting. I haven't decided whether to post a WIP of it; but when it's done I'll definitely post it online.
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