Giant Self Portrait - Jan. 2017
"To cause the face to appear in a mass of flame make use of the following: mix together thoroughly petroleum, lard, mutton tallow and quick lime. Distill this over a charcoal fire, and the liquid which results can be burned on the face without harm." - Harry Houdini
Burn it with Fire
Charcoal, White Sepia, and Colored Pastel
Reflection
If I'm going to be honest, I hate my self-portrait. Maybe it's because I think it sucks (generally I just can't draw people unless they're caricatures), or maybe because it doesn't exactly look like me. Well, it kind of does. I guess those are my eyes, lips, and maybe nose, but the shape of my face is totally off. My face is round. Like really round. You've probably never seen a rounder face in your life. Okay, maybe that's a little bit of an over-exaggeration. But in my self-portrait, my face wasn't round. As you can see, it is thin and long. This is because the picture I took of myself got distorted due to my crappy selfie camera that elongated my face.
One of the main problems I had was with the mathematical aspect of the portrait. First, I got my grid all wrong. Also, I'm pretty sure that the picture took of myself wasn't perfectly straight on. So when we were looking for patterns in our faces, the left side of my face matched up with what they were supposed to but on the right side of my face, everything was off due to the slight angle of my face. I also struggled with the technical drawing that we were expected to implement. I'm the kind of person that draws what I see. I don't use grids. I don't use patterns to help me with symmetry. I just draw. And for the most part, it works out. So using all these mathematical techniques made me feel out of place. I also wasn't good at it. In fact, I screwed up the grid so bad on my portrait, I had to start over. I eventually partially used the grid and partially used my own eyes. I didn't let the grid control me the second time around.
However, as much as I disliked the process, this project lead me to a life-changing revelation. I HATE charcoal. First, it's not permanent. Every time I would add a significant amount of value to my face in the form of shadows, it would come off. So I kept having to go over the shadows and, in the end, my face turned out to be a complete mess. There were smudges everywhere - no value whatsoever. And they wouldn't come off! The Oil from my hands replaced their temporary visa with full on citizenship. This lead me to have to color most of my face in with highlights in order to smooth out my skin. I then decided to add color to distract any onlooker from my horrible realism drawing skills (Just kidding. I mean mediocre realism drawing skills). These colors were red, orange, and yellow. This gave the effect that my hair is on fire. It represents what I want to do with my portrait - burn it with fire. Also, red and orange are my favorite colors.
But even though I hate this piece of trash, it did help me become a better artist. By drawing a person, especially myself, I stepped out of my comfort zone. I'm not a people person (get it?). I like to draw objects - inanimate objects because that is what I'm good at. If this project wasn't assigned to me, I would never have drawn myself. And even if I did, I would have never drawn myself with charcoal. On brown paper. And I struggled with the materials that I was given. The brown paper threw me off. I'm used to using the white of the paper for highlights, but with brown paper, I couldn't do that so I really struggled incorporating it into my portrait. I also, originally struggled with highlights -I was scared of adding white sepia to my face (I think I compensated for this in the end result by making myself look like a ghost) so I added a bunch to my hair, which made me look like Frankenstein's psycho wife. But don't worry. I fixed it. Kind of. Now I just look like Heatblast from Ben 10. Overall, this was a challenge, but I'm proud of myself for nor giving up. Drawing people is what I struggle with most so I am glad that I experienced what I did with this project.
One of the main problems I had was with the mathematical aspect of the portrait. First, I got my grid all wrong. Also, I'm pretty sure that the picture took of myself wasn't perfectly straight on. So when we were looking for patterns in our faces, the left side of my face matched up with what they were supposed to but on the right side of my face, everything was off due to the slight angle of my face. I also struggled with the technical drawing that we were expected to implement. I'm the kind of person that draws what I see. I don't use grids. I don't use patterns to help me with symmetry. I just draw. And for the most part, it works out. So using all these mathematical techniques made me feel out of place. I also wasn't good at it. In fact, I screwed up the grid so bad on my portrait, I had to start over. I eventually partially used the grid and partially used my own eyes. I didn't let the grid control me the second time around.
However, as much as I disliked the process, this project lead me to a life-changing revelation. I HATE charcoal. First, it's not permanent. Every time I would add a significant amount of value to my face in the form of shadows, it would come off. So I kept having to go over the shadows and, in the end, my face turned out to be a complete mess. There were smudges everywhere - no value whatsoever. And they wouldn't come off! The Oil from my hands replaced their temporary visa with full on citizenship. This lead me to have to color most of my face in with highlights in order to smooth out my skin. I then decided to add color to distract any onlooker from my horrible realism drawing skills (Just kidding. I mean mediocre realism drawing skills). These colors were red, orange, and yellow. This gave the effect that my hair is on fire. It represents what I want to do with my portrait - burn it with fire. Also, red and orange are my favorite colors.
But even though I hate this piece of trash, it did help me become a better artist. By drawing a person, especially myself, I stepped out of my comfort zone. I'm not a people person (get it?). I like to draw objects - inanimate objects because that is what I'm good at. If this project wasn't assigned to me, I would never have drawn myself. And even if I did, I would have never drawn myself with charcoal. On brown paper. And I struggled with the materials that I was given. The brown paper threw me off. I'm used to using the white of the paper for highlights, but with brown paper, I couldn't do that so I really struggled incorporating it into my portrait. I also, originally struggled with highlights -I was scared of adding white sepia to my face (I think I compensated for this in the end result by making myself look like a ghost) so I added a bunch to my hair, which made me look like Frankenstein's psycho wife. But don't worry. I fixed it. Kind of. Now I just look like Heatblast from Ben 10. Overall, this was a challenge, but I'm proud of myself for nor giving up. Drawing people is what I struggle with most so I am glad that I experienced what I did with this project.