14 - Self Portrait

Here are some quick self-portraits I did in the mirror. It was pretty awkward drawing from the mirror but yeah, it’s amazing how difficult it really is drawing you, but it gets really peaceful and gets a nice sense of connection to yourself. Appreciating your uniqueness of features and characteristic which I felt I had a lot more after this exercise. I saw myself different, I saw that I am a good subject and first hand reference to study and on each attempt I had made that extra tweak of improvement.

So I take one of my sketches and put it into Photoshop, as you can see from my process, I just painted the light and shadows, then I manipulated this with using some really good space references and used custom brushes. I quite like the funky outcome.

This was just a quick simply play around in Photoshop. Just understanding and experimenting with different ways of painting/ concepting. 

This is a portrait practise I did of my girlfriend. I really like how this turned out, I didn’t quite finish it, though to the stage I was at, quite impress in my painting skills in blending the skin and having good contrast of hues, that gives a good sense of roundness and likeness of my girlfriend and even the simple background elements thought it worked well with this painting.

In Life drawing we was using charcoal medium and I really enjoy using that. So I thought to use some charcoal in practise for my portraits. I did a speed sketch of my brother, trying to be expressive with the medium, using it sides to cover areas of tone and then darkening the areas of interest. I still have problems in getting the features to look much more convincing the lips I have difficulty with, but there is decent proportions and likeness, which I am pleased with.

I’d then do one of my self. I felt a massive improvement and amaze on the time I did this in. I also love the texture of which the charcoal presents and felt a much stronger contrast in this charcoal drawing. I felt I was able to express myself really comfortable when doing this and that Improved on the features which when using charcoal you have to be accurate and bang on correct first time, because it really isn’t erasable.

I thought to put this in Photoshop and apply some colour to it. Just nice and subtly, nothing to heavy and looks a nice graphical style.

I was enjoying speed drawing a lot and so I thought to try one digitally and sticking to one brush and settings, I created this within an hour and 45minutes I felt it right and enough to stop at that time, because I really like how it looked in a sketchy state and not trying to spend hours in fixing/ detailing it, which could end up ruining it.