Three months! The equinox has passed, spring is here (supposedly) and today will be my 84th drawing. This week has focused on the domestic and the personal. I have been watching a BBC show about amateur painters and have been inspired to have a go at portraits…… Wow is that hard! Self portraits too! Well I look like a crazy, angry person, maybe I am?! I have an illusion of my appearance which is shattered by my drawings of myself – at last I can be happy that my drawings are rubbish! What a lark this is……………….
77 Our House
79 Life Drawing
79-2 Portrait of Woman
80 Portrait of John
81 Self Portrait – scary!
82 Self Portrait – crazy
83 Home Sweet Home
Any of you artists out there, have you tried self portraits?
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You do look a bit scary! It must be because you are concentrating when you are drawing and you have captured the intensity of your stare. I sometimes catch a reflection of myself when I’m typing on the computer and I don’t look like the person I would like to think others see in me!
Never been game to do a self portrait, I have enough trouble with photos of myself. I am critical of my drawings and of pictures of myself, I am not sure I could distance myself enough to do a self portrait and live with it. Your drawings are really good and as Clare said probably accurate as you do look very focused. But enough of that, your house is so gorgeous, what a beautiful building. Karen
Yes, the house is lovely, and almost as wonky as depicted. It is 15th Century in parts and has been our home for 29 years! I need to work on perspective…….. 🙂
Wow, 15 century is amazing, here in Australia 18 century is as old as we get. Karen
Ok I have just gone back to your faces to try and figure out why they all look a bit scary and I have two suggestions to try. One is the mouths, even if the mouth is slightly turned down in concentration, just at the very corner tilt the line up or add a little upward line like a very small dimple. This stops the expression looking sour without changing the line of the mouth. I think your pupils are too dark, or really need darker lines/ shading near them, particularly on the upper lid and the inner corner. Also try a couple of small highlights in the eye instead of one as that can soften the eye too. Good luck, these are great and you are braver than me to do self portraits, Karen
Hi Karen, some good tips here which I shall bear in mind next time I get the courage to have another go. I have found it fascinating to do, and will try again. Thank you for taking the time for such a constructive critique
You are so welcome, I love to try and figure out why some drawings don’t work as well as they could, they were such good drawings I just had to figure out why they weren’t looking as good as they should. Faces are so hard the tiniest wrong line and the person has the totally wrong expression. Karen
Oooh Sue you are doing so well at this. I have trouble enough doing my weekly but we are 1/4 of the way through. You have done a phenomenal amount of work.
I have found Lee Hammond’s books on coloured pencil and graphite portraits to be helpful. I don’t particularly like her style of applying colour (or tone with graphite) but she takes you right through eyes, nose, lips, hair, and front facing or side facing etc.
As we all know, drawing what is there versus drawing the symbols we have in our minds can be difficult. I find this particularly true of portraits so her tutorials are good for that.
Thanks for the praise, but I must confess some of the drawings are very scrubby and I don’t spend much time on them especially if I leave it too late in the day! I have found a book on our library catalogue by Lee Hammond and have ordered it ‘How to do lifelike drawings’ or something like that. Thanks for the suggestion. Sue