Week 15: Self Portraits

We began our last major project today during class. This will take at least four class periods.  We are doing self portraits. Not my favorite thing. However, at the beginning of class, Prof. Garguilo demonstrated his approach to drawing a self portrait with vine charcoal. His approach was to first lay out the proportions and then build the face from the center out. This made so much more sense to me than what I had been taught in all of my prior drawing classes.

Before we started drawing, it was suggested that we paint a wash over the canvas to have a starting base. He used a wash of burnt sienna, but I felt that I have a more yellow base to my skin, so I mixed some yellow ochre with my burnt sienna.

From there, we started laying out our faces. This is where mine started:

Prof. Garguilo went around to each student and did some adjustments:

In my case, he worked on my eyes. The rest of the class was spent adding details and values to the drawing.

What I am pleased with is that my shadows make sense in the pictures. However, my classmates still think I draw myself too old. Ah well, we will fix that when we paint.