Self Portrait, 5th December 2005
6th December 2005
New project - a self portrait a day until Christmas.
Getting back into drawing again has reminded me how important drawing is, and how bad mine currently is. We're running up to Christmas now, and I have a lot of client work to do and will probably be working every day, so not so much chance to paint. With these two things in mind, I've decided to keep things going with drawings, which aren't dependent on daylight so I can do them any time.
So here it is, the new project. Even if it's just a 30 minute sketch, I'll do a self portrait a day until Christmas. That'll make, erm, 20 drawings I think. It'll be very good practice.
This self portrait was drawn using the bigger of the two grids taped onto the mirror. The mirror effectively became the picture plane since I roughed out the drawing based on what I saw on the grid. With about four feet between me and the mirror, the picture plane was four feet away. I wonder if changing the distance of the picture plane changes the depth of the perspective? An experiment for the future perhaps.
I drew out a slightly bigger grid on the paper in order to blow up the image slightly. If you look closely, you can just see some of the grid lines around the date, and the central vertical grid line coming down through the top of my head. My right eye (as you look at the picture) is right on the centre line.
Even though I had the grid set up, which greatly simplifies the measuring and roughing out stage, I remember I was still finding it hard to turn off and draw shapes. For most of the drawing I was thinking 'eye', 'nose', But every now and again I remembered to make the mental shift to seeing just shapes. I guess the discipline will come with time and practice. A drawing a day until Christmas will be a good start.