Self Portrait

For my self portrait I decided to do a multipart drawing in a more literal sense of a self portrait. Everything was done on an 18 x 24 sized paper. I started by doing a self portrait in charcoal and pencil, adding as much detail to my face to mimic the lighting I was in. I also used both a selfie from the angle I was sitting in as well as the mirror in front of me. This one took a bit of time because I kept needing to erase and redraw but, I really like how it turned out.

The next parts were a both simple and slightly difficult process. I took some tracing paper and used resources online to find a skeleton, using the tracing paper to then draw out my skeleton. It's a bit rougher but it does add a different touch compared to a regular portrait. I did the same afterwards with muscle layout and trying to properly draw out where each muscle was along the skull and shoulders. It was a much stranger experience because it required the use of both the skeleton drawing and the full portrait drawing. But, it turned out just as good as I hoped it would.

The last part was a more fun project, doing the same with an overlay of all of them being used to draw out a Zombie. I had this idea because of the episode of "Project Blue Book” we watched recently. It showed me, in a way, that everything isn't as it seems. Anything can crumble before us and anything unexpected can happen, like a zombie apocalypse. It’s an idea that seems a bit nihilistic, but unexpected events aren’t always so bad. There have been times where unexpected hand movements while I was drawing turned out to be better than I expected. Or that an unexpected trip with some friends turned out to be a much better time than I thought it would.

Overall, these self portraits also show that I have a strive to be detailed in the best of my ability. In recent years my drawing skills and my detailing skills have gotten much better, both of which are important to me as an aspiring artist. The fibers of the muscles, the shadows on my face and skeleton because of the lighting, the loss of tissue and what is under the skin. All of it is important to me when I draw. I also did these because I wanted to claim myself and identify myself simply as a human. And while I would also like to have added more about my identity, I felt like this was a much more ideal way to do so. Especially with the outbreak and isolation in recent weeks, I felt it was best to not identify myself as an individual, but to identify myself with the whole of humanity.