Self Portrait Number 17

Well, it has been months since I have produced a self-portrait.  Over the summer I had a greater interest in drinking a beer while reading from my Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars Battleworld Box Set after work, but as the end-of-day sunshine became impossible to capture and the  weather worsened I have taken refuge in my drawing table once more.

This picture is from a video I made back in October. I had been looking for another project to work with my water color pencils and this screen capture had the rays of sunlight at my head making it fun to try and capture.

After Self Portrait 16, I was anxious to work with color again but every attempt I made was unsatisfying.  I began to get frustrated with nearly everything I was trying to produce and eventually just took to doing the occasional practice drawing.

After the long summer break, I had enough time between drawings that I went back to using the drawing upside down technique for this project.  Much of the anxiety that presented itself after Self Portrait 16 had receded and I just started drawing as if I had never taken a break.

I think Self Portrait 17  took at least two months from start to finish which points out to me the need to record the start date just so I know my own progress.

I did get some wonderful new tools for my drawing for Christmas, a brand new drawing table.  A nice LED light that stretches across the table, some flesh tone pencils, a male form drawing manikin and a male hand manikin. So since Christmas I have been practicing action shots with the manikin.

Now that I am at the end of the year and have produced 17 self-portraits and a variety of practice sketches, I am very glad I started on this last year.  I still need a lot of practice but I have drawings that I have drawn.  The idea that I cannot draw has been vanquished, it is only to figure out how to sketch certain things or control the ratios and perspective of what I am attempting to draw.  I look at the world differently now.  When I look at a person or an object, my mind starts breaking the basic shapes down and I am constantly asking myself, 'How can I draw this? How can I bring out the color in this?" so that this has been one of the most successful New Years Resolution-type things I've ever attempted.

Self Portrait 16

I'm still behind in getting out one self portrait per week but I am learning a lot. Mixing colors, watching YouTube videos, patience, and when to stop for the night.

Here I think I did a pretty good job. Maybe even a very good job. I might go back and see about adding a visual representation of the stands and maybe to touch up anything I notice later but essentially SP 16 is in the books. And only 7 days after the last one which happened to be on Walpurgisnacht.

Today, all I know about was the British elections, and within a week of the last one.

Well, don't have too much to say tonight. Brain is ready for rest.

Self Portrait Number 13:The "Replicas Word Salad" Edition

In the last two weeks I feel I have achieved a breakthrough in my drawing. It started when I started working on Self Portrait Number 12 and I put on Gary Numan's Replicas album.

Me and my friend, Jay, discovered Numan, I think in 1981 shortly after we had started reading Philip K. Dick. I'm not too sure of the timeline but we discovered Philip K. Dick shortly before he died in 1982.

We were drawn to Numan's music in part because his early albums have a science fiction theme. The self-titled Tubeway Army, the first full album by Numan and his band starts off, "Flow my tears, the new police song.." which is an obvious reference to Dick's 'Flow My Tears,' the Policeman Said.

The second album, Replicas, takes place in a future where humanity and technology are alternately at war with each other and loving each other and certain characters on the album are either humans attempting to become machines or machines emulating human traits.

While all science fiction is really a reflection and commentary on the era in which it was written, it is very interesting to compare Gary Numan's vision of Machmen, 'Friends,' the police, and humans and see how it compares to today.

In Numan's dystopia, there are electronic robots known as 'Friends' that seem to exist for humans to love, they have different faces but they are all programmed the same and at times, while listening to the album one is never sure if the character narrating the song is a 'Friend' or a human. Or if it is the opposite of what it claims to be and is simply confused in its thinking.

In the Machmen, the protagonist appears to be a human trying to fit in with machine culture, he starts out eager to please whoever or whatever he is singing the song:

"I'd give it all up for you, even become a number just for you. The strangest living boy you could ever wish to see. That's me."

But he cannot quite seem to be able to quit his humaness, first he grows to resent himself:

"then my mind turned on me with a vengeance I had never known, my own."

And later he turns on his new culture:

"I saw you behind the wall, I even heard you laugh at me, you disgust me tonight with your answer to something new, that's you."

Today we have our own version of 'Friends' we call smart phones and while I don't feel I have any level of intimacy with my smart phone, I will not share my phone with anybody who I do not have a level of intimacy with. If a stranger asks to borrow my phone, I cannot lend it to him and I even feel violated that he has asked.  Yet if it is someone I have a level of intimacy with, I don't even think twice about lend them my phone.

Very often, I wonder who I am when I look in the mirror.

I actually took the picture as an interesting self portrait to draw because of the weird way we have mirrors in our bathroom.  First of all, it is not easy to find a place in the bathroom where one can stand and have two faces reflected in both mirrors, so that was the first challenged.

Then, of course, starting the drawing process. I actually tried to start on this drawing a few weeks ago but only ended up making some rough sketches.  I am very satisfied in how this one eventually turned out.

It took me three or four drawing sessions to complete. I had almost completed it by the time it would have been due, which was Wednesday but I ended up finishing it up on Friday, not having any time or energy to work on Thursday. Overall, I like it.  Seeing them side by side for the first time, I do see where improvements could be made. Right now, I am adverse to even using a straight edge as I train my mind to draw what it sees, to the best of my ability.

Self Portrait Number 12

Another week with very little time to draw. When I was about to sit down on Friday night, suddenly there was a plumbing problem to attend to. Saturday we celebrated my 50th birthday and other than getting some art supplies and arraigning my pencils, there was no time to draw.

Sunday, I finally sat down and I chose a still image from a movie a friend took with my phone while I was at my birthday cake. But Sunday I couldn't make a go of it. I started five or six times and abandoned each time.

Yesterday, Monday, March 30th I had some success:

I am very satisfied in how this one turned out even though I have more of a bubble head and the shadow looks more like some sort of ancient helmet.  What I like about it is the glasses.

Ultimately, this was a very challenging portrait. It is the first time I tried to draw a profile and at the same time there was so much shadow and shading to contend with. One part I really struggled with was getting the glasses right and in the end I think I got the nose and the glasses pretty well.

I do wish I had started the portrait more to the right side of the page but after so many false starts I decided to concentrate on the face and so I ran out of room for the corner of the birthday cake and the candles.  Oh well. It is only number 12.

Bonus features: For the party, I decided to hang all of the drawings I felt were complete. It is nice to see so many considering I only started on January 7 when there may have been a sacred geometry drawing or two but nothing more:

Self Portrait Number Eleven

This week I had no time at all to draw until Friday night and I wasn't particularly enthused with my choices.

I had this picture in the middle of winter as a fun way to acknowledge Chillpack Hollywood Hour's 400th episode which ended with a rare technical glitch: The theme song ended before allotted time and one of the guys could be heard saying, "We ran out of theme song."

But when I considered this one in the past as possible subject for a self-portrait I rejected it because my face is so covered.

On Friday, I just decided to draw for the sake of drawing, I wasn't intending to make this anything but an exercise in noticing shapes, which is why everything is so rough but when I looked at it the next morning, it reminded me of The Scream by Edvard Munch so I decided to add colors, not aping the original scream but evoking it.

Unfortunately, I did not have paints, only some felt-tip markers that were marketed as "brushes" but respond nothing like brushes and many were already dried out even though I only bought them three weeks ago.

Oh well, I only bought them on a whim and so I added waters to the dry markers and proceed.

Even though this drawing looks no better than something I might have been forced to draw in grade school, I find I like it very much. Somehow the way I chose to add color makes it pop and look very 3D.

I could not fit everything into the placard I was holding in the original picture so I chose to abbreviate it as "Ego is Skel."

I think this is the most artistic thing I have drawn so far and that it evoked The Scream to me simply fit in with my mood this weekend.

On Thursday and into most of the day Friday, I was on a very high good feeling place after having some people over to my house on Thursday night. But I feel I have been falling since then and even though I had no conscious intention of expressing this in my drawing, it is there nonetheless.

I will have to get some paints soon, maybe I will recreate this on on a canvas and it will be my first canvas? I don't know.

Here are the images:

Bonus! Bonus! Bonus! Man Screams At Yellow Paint!

Self Portrait Number 10

I'm behind in posting my self portraits. I had a bit of a drawing block and I just drew the same picture three or four times and then finally moved on but while I was in crisis I did not wish to post anything publicly.

This week I actually missed my deadline anyway but for a happy reason, it was my birthday on Tuesday and Patti got me a pencil box so I can take some penciles with me, and a giant sketch pad.

While, the first thing I wanted to do was to draw a giant picture that need to be this big!

 This is one of my harder ones so far so far as detail goes. I probably need a two weeks just to draw more details in the photo but I decided to stop in this case when I finished drawing the big balloon.

I seem to have misplaced my neck in the drawing and my torso seems really long but overall I am satisfied with this one for where I am.

I think just adding the little detail of the shadow by my feet gives it some depth. I will revisit this photo later, I think and try and fill in more of the background.

Self-Portrait Number 6 and 7- In Color and Black and White

After last week's disaster in trying to use color, I decided to draw the same photo in black and white.

I took a lot of time with the above photo and I just stopped today after taking a side by side photo comparison.

At this point, I took one more look at the uncolored drawing, erased a few jagged lines but decided to stop at this point because I felt I made some progress in giving some 3D and I got the slight unevenness of my face pretty well and I didn't want to ruin what I already had by making changes.

One thing I felt while working on the second drawing is a great love for myself for the face, working to get it right. So, if someone has a problem with self-love, this could be a good therapy. Especially in a case where I am working on a picture from 20 years ago.

But also I noticed when I am drawing another person, even if it doesn't work out as well as I like, I am loving the person while I am drawing. Which I don't know if it is like that for everyone who is trying to draw a face but it seems right to me. But maybe that is how you become an artist, it  isn't the skill of being able to draw but to love what you are drawing?

Self Portrait Week 5

I got a head start on this week.

This time I tried drawing upside down. It was a weird feeling and while it didn't take me that long, it felt like my hardest one to draw, to date. I felt like something in my mind was fighting or objecting while I drew.

Ultimately, this is my favorite one so far.

Self Portrait a Week: Week 3

This week I was a bit ambitious and tried to sketch an picture where I am with another person. This is from a vacation Patti and I took last year, this is at Hot Springs Arkansas on February 28, 2014:

In this case I think I did better at shading. Getting Patti close to recognizable was a task because she isn't fully in the frame and getting anything close to her nose was a huge task. I think I'm a long way off of creating recognizable portraits for the most part. Here is the source I used to sketch:

I can see a lot of room for improvement in getting proportions right too.

When I haven't been attempting self-portrait I have been practicing shading. I tried just trying to make a circle look like a sphere, I tried an apple and I think I learned the most working on sketching this stone skull:

The thing I learned most from working with the skull was how to dissect the skull into two different shapes and then bring the depth out by shading and adding additional lines. But I still have a long way to go.

Self Portrait Number 2

Here are the rules I am drawing by:

1) the end goal is 52 self-portraits by 1/31/2015
2) If I do three in a week, Great!
3) If  I don't do any in a week, maybe I was busy.
4) This is not a challenge
5) Nothing is perfect, if I don't like an attempt, too bad for me, it still counts toward the 52.

I think that's it.  Here's the self-portrait for the second week of January, 2015:

This one is take from a picture when Patti and I were on vacation last March. The photo is from March 12, 2014 and we are staying in a condo at Sanibel Island in Florida.

I am not as happy with this one as I am with the first one but, hey, it's only the second one. Maybe I try too hard. I have trouble capturing the mouth and the ear and the nose.

I started today by practicing shading, just trying to make a sphere out of s circle and even though I wasn't too happy with my shading, I was eager to jump in and try again.

Then I remember it is only the second week and prior to three days ago I never tried to draw a self portrait ever, so I am good with it.

The One Self Portrait Per Week Show

I have always been a frustrated artist, as I am sure are many of us. And like many of us, I want to be good a drawing but I know that I am not so I never practice!

What!?

No wonder I am a frustrated artist! It is like writing: If you are not writing you are not practicing!

So, yesterday, which in the the nominal time was known as January 6, 2015, I was listening to a new favorite podcast of mine, Your Chillpak Hollywood Hour hosted by TV's One-Third of the Lone Gunmen (among other things), Dean Haglund and filmmaker and actor Phil Leirness.

On this occasion, they were doing a show on their New Years Intentions/Resolutions (Ego is Skeleton), which is a show they do every year but this is my first year of listening and Dean mentions an artist who is doing a self-portrait per day and that one of his goals for the year was to do something along those lines, maybe not quite as frequently.

This resonates with me in a way that I cannot explain. It suddenly hits me that I can draw a self-portrait, at least one-per-week and then I will be able to measure any improvement in my drawing by the end of the year!

So here is my first attempt which I just drew tonight:

Which is based on this photograph I took yesterday morning (see above for nominal time date) which I took only because I love how the towel did my hair!

I had the most trouble with the nose but for a first attempt; I am off to the races!

Thank you Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness for your Ego is Skeleton and for your inspiring show!