Exercise 2- Your own head

For this exercise we were asked to draw two interesting images of our out head, to think about the pose, measuring the face, tones and lines. Look at ourself and make lines, don’t concentrate too much on being completely accurate, keep moving the pencil and just slowly build up tone. Consider how to pose for the drawing and how to angle your head swell as not do such a bold line to create a cartoon effect just look a the lighting and don’t be bold on the outline.

Below are the two pictures of my results, I chose to do one drawing in charcoal and another in a soft pencil:

For this exercise I decided to use a soft pencil as that is what I am used to using and I felt like I would have been able to achieve the tones throughout the face to make a more realistic portrait. I thought using this media would suit me best as I could blend in the different tones and create the more accurate portrait of myself. I thought this media went well as it blended well and I got the right shadows and tones throughout the piece. I also used a rubber to create lighter tones and I thought this created a good effect in the face. In self critic , I feel like I should use a slightly thinner pencil because I think the pencil was too soft to get the right amount of detail to create that really realistic piece. The proportions do look fairly accurate, the only thing I feel like needs a lot of look into is the hair, I wasn’t quite sure how to represent my hair as it is very curly, I want to practice on this type of style because I feel like the hair lets the piece down on the realism. I do believe I got the proportions correct and the distancing from each feature looks accurate from what I see in the mirror.

On the second piece I wanted to use a different type of media to experiment with portraits in a different material therefore I could get a different effect and look on the picture. I felt charcoal would be a good idea to start looking into doing portraits in a different media. I think the different techniques you can use to create a good looking tonal piece. On this portrait I decided to take a different angle therefore I could be more adventures with trying to get the proportions right because I do believe it is more difficult to match up the proportions and features when the face was on a different angle.

All in all, I do feel like the first portrait has a little more of a realism because of the tones throughout. Yet I do like the effect I achieved using the charcoal, I feel it created a more interesting piece and the hair looks better in this piece. I do feel like these pictures do look like me, if I saw this drawing I would feel like I knew it was me. I do believe I have a lot of practice to do to create a more realistic look on my portraits yet I am making progress. It wasn’t too difficult to switch from individual features to full yet it is difficult to make them all not look alien together.