Monday, January 16, 2012

Self Portrait

Me, 18" x 24",  Pencil and Carcoal  (#9)


I am taking a drawing class and this is our first assignment
that I am sharing with you. 
It was very interesting and it was good to take a break
from painting and just having a pencil and an eraser.
I think overall it turned out pretty well. This was
my second try and this looks much more like me
than the first one.  I like the way the hair is, I am holding
up my medium long locks in the back.  I like the angle of the face,
and while I blended a lot, I think I did pretty well creating
a 3-dimensional portrait but room for improvement.
I also like the mouth and nose, I had a challenge lining them up.
My biggest challenge was representing the subtle value
 gradations.  On the cheek part, there were these light portions
but three different lights.A pink light, a grey light, a yellowish
light.  How to represent with just pencil?
Things I want to improve: The variety of my line work,
especially around the edges.  Also to losen up a bit. 
When drawing a portrait, I tend to get really tight and that is not
my intuitive style, so I am fighting the whole time between my style
and accuracy.  Finally, the quality of my hash marks. 
 I am a blender, and the artist that I tried to model
for this Ingres is not.  He creates and builds up dark values
with layering hatch marks.
It did not seem that he blended a lot.  It seemed that he took care
of the subtle variations by extending the hash marks and paid
attention to where the second layer should go etc. 
If you google Ingres >Drawings, you can see for yourself his style.
I also liked the way he would build up one part,
usually the face and keep other parts
usually the body and background just line work. 
He is pretty awesome and I believe you can tell he is a
master draftsman in his paintings.
I am going to give myself a challenge and believe me it will
be a challenge.  I am going to try to do another self portrait
without blending. 
You can join me if you want.  I will post the results
if it comes out halfway decent.
Thanks for reading.  Trish






2 comments:

Gloria E. Moses said...

Great job, I really like the way you did the hand in the hair and the marks over the hand. Very cool. I struggle with just the opposite, I'm a tight painter trying to paint lose and accurate!

Patricia Ansert Art said...

Thank you, it was a slight surprise actually. Not meaning to have that effect. Very interesting Gloria.