Traditional Drawing: Evaluation

During the process of drawing my self-portrait I made sure to focus on the subtleties in the lighting on the curves of the face. Light is not scattered evenly across the features; there are natural disparities in the texture and shape of the face, and a seemingly flat area of value can be scrutinised more closely and be found to have an intricate array of value. I examined these areas of the image closely, albeit sometimes to my discomfort to be looking so closely at my own face. This discomfort soon stopped as my mindset changed to thinking of the photo as a study rather than an image. I found it essential to view the portrait as a three dimensional figure made of curves and shadows as opposed to hard lines, as they turned out to be few and far between. I closely tried to imitate the tones and contrast of different areas by viewing the image as frequently as the speed of my drawing, and built up layers to adjust and add contrast where needed. However, I did tend to become a little too preoccupied with small details, which ultimately causes a slow process and creates some disparity due to viewing it too closely and isolating it from the whole. Whether due to the lightness of my image or a light hand, my drawing is not as rich in depth would have been possible, though I did try my best to improve it. Despite these struggles, I do think that my work was successful, due to the fact that it resembles the image well, and genuinely looks like my face, as opposed to the work I did at the beginning of the semester. However, even if it it didn’t turn out to look like my face, I would still consider my work a success – the effort and time that went into it is good enough.

The technique that I found the most interesting was most likely the upside-down method, while the most helpful would probably be the more broad technique of focusing on shapes and negative space. The upside-down method was quite interesting in the aspect that I didn’t expect the technique to work as well as it did – the surprising accuracy that only seeing the lines and shapes brings. While drawing I used the technique of focusing on shapes and value rather than the overall ‘object’, and I found that this increased my precision.

At the beginning of the project, I investigated what kind of portrait I wanted to create by looking at various other artists’ works. I found that I liked the more simple view of the face, and decided to settle with that. This meant that I was able to obtain a lot of detail in the facial features. Contrast and lighting was also important, and I made sure to choose an image with varying light and tonal values to make it interesting, as well as exploiting the length of the hair to be able to draw some more complex and interesting forms. When transferring the drawing to the board, I pressed gently and creates softer outlines of the general proportions of my face so as to not create indents or lines in the paper. Before doing this, I experimented with samples of the paper to get used to the grain and type so as to produce a good result. In the filling in and shading processes, I paid particular attention to contrast. I had edited the photo beforehand to create more of this contrast. It aided in the more lifelike aspect of my drawing. I also chose to start lightly, and build up depth over time in the face, while not doing this in the hair, due to their differing tones and complexity. Overall, it has been a very enjoyable process.