ONLINE DRAWING COURSE – SELF PORTRAITS
For our final project in the portraits module, we had to draw a self portrait. Initially I really wasn’t sure about this. I haven’t got any decent recent photos of myself and wasn’t sure I really wanted to draw myself at all anyway! As a second choice, we could draw one of two reference portrait photos supplied but I didn’t think they were especially interesting.
Choosing what to draw
Phil really did want us to do the self portrait rather than anything else, and in the end I decided to comply. However, I decided to do something a little different, and draw myself from an old photo. Going through my box of family photos, I narrowed it down to a choice of two, and really couldn’t choose between them, so I decided to do both!
Here are the two reference photos I chose.
I do like to think outside the box a bit, and come up with something different from a straightforward following of the brief!
The wedding photo
This is the first one of the two that I did. The black and white photo was the one that was published in the local paper. I chose ink pen and watercolour as the medium for this picture. I really struggled to get the proportions right, and I used a combination of measuring stick and comparative measuring, and plain straightforward observation – in the end I resorted to using my proportional divider which I don’t use very often these days. It’s a cheap plastic one and tends to move out of position too easily to be useful. I’m seriously considering getting a decent brass one – they aren’t too expensive on Amazon. It took a long time to get the proportions righ,t but in the end i was satisfied.
The initial pencil drawing
As always, this is the “ugly stage” of any drawing! I think a lot of that is to do with the eyes, which look weird without the pupils being filled in.
The ink work
Definitely better at this stage.
The completed picture
This was the finished result with the addition of the watercolour.
The drawing with the reference photo
I chose the actual colours of the embroidery on the dress. In the end, I added a bit more to the bouquet which I had cut off a bit in the original drawing. It also helped balance the picture a little better as it was too far over to the left (this often seems to happen with my drawings!).
Baby Shoshi
This photo was taken in a professional photography studio back in 1955 when I was two years old. For this self portrait, I chose coloured pencils, which I thought would give a nice soft look. I got the initial drawing down a lot more quickly than the wedding one, and just used basic observation, without any measuring techniques. I probably spent at least as much time on the dress as I did on the face.
The initial pencil drawing
Adding the coloured pencils
The figure looked a bit as if it was floating in mid-air, so as a final touch, I added a simple background.
The completed drawing
The drawing with the reference photo
The two self portraits together
All in all, this has been a fascinating exercise, and I am glad I did the self portraits in the end. It did feel really peculiar, though, drawing myself!
Moving on to the final module
I cannot believe we have now completed the final module of the course. Only one more to do now – “Drawing on Grey” – and the course will be finished. The year-long course has gone by in a flash, and I still can’t believe what I am capable of under Phil’s expert tuition!
