Week 1: Homework

PART 1

The first part of the homework was creating this blog to share our thoughts and reflections on the week's class and our work. I think this will be useful for looking back on and comparing work I have done, and seeing what I have learnt.

PART 2

The second part of the homework is to draw a self portrait in any medium we would like. My portraits probably took me around 30-40 minutes each. I found this homework very hard because as stated in my last post, I find drawing to get a likeness very hard; even more so when it's my own face! I can be quite a perfectionist with my work, so having drawings that I'm unhappy with can be very frustrating and disheartening. Despite this, I know it is important to experience this in order to learn and improve, so I tried not to let it bother me too much. I'm still uploading the results because I know that there is lots these can teach me in the future when I'm looking back at them. 

I made two portraits because I wanted to try a couple of angles and techniques, and I think this was a good idea because both turned out very differently and have individual good and bad points! The first one I drew using my left hand because I really enjoyed that exercise in the ice breaker session, and I liked the slightly wonky and loose results it created. The drawing turned out pretty nicely, although it doesn't look too much like me. I used scribbling to create tone which works well with the sketchy style of linework too. Because I was using my non dominant hand I couldn't apply too much pressure with the shading, but I think this is beneficial as it didn't get overworked and remains subtle. The softer tones of pencil suits the expression I chose to capture, looking serious and perhaps a little lost or melancholy. I think to develop the piece further I could maybe have worked more into the background or clothing, and maybe included colour, but I captured so much expression and tone in the face that I wanted it to remain the focal point and was scared of losing it by adding more. Experimenting is an important process however, so I may try and step out of my comfort zone and work into this again at a later date.

40 MINS / 4B PENCIL

This next portrait is one I did in my own time just to experiment with drawing style and likeness. I again used my left hand and this time didn't add any tone or other mediums. I wanted to leave it as a line drawing to focus on the subject and hide the linework. I think I managed to capture a better likeness with this portrait and improved on my proportions.

35 MINS / 4H PENCIL

For the second portrait I created a more intense contrast by using pencil along with a dip pen and black Indian ink. The reason I repeated the medium of pencil is that as this was my first exercise I was still somewhat tentative. The ink was really fun to apply over the top and once again I kept it very loose and fluid, which brings a slightly dreamlike effect to the drawing, matching the thoughtful expression on my face. I can see that I'm learning to relate medium choice to the image, as I feel I was successful with this in both my portraits! Something I would like to try in the future is revisiting these portraits with colour and seeing if I can relate this to the subject matter as well. Once again, this portrait doesn't look much like me, but I'm not too worried about this at the current stage, as it's more about experimentation and the process of creating the drawing itself. I enjoyed the challenge of this task.

45 MINS / 4B PENCIL, INDIAN INK & DIP PEN