Selfie

12" x 9" Charcoal on Paper

Haven't done a lot of portrait sketching in the last month. The weekly drawing session had to move on from our last location and we're still trying to find a new home. In the mean time I still feel a need to practice portraits, and without the opportunities provided by a weekly drawing session, had to call on the slightly annoyed looking fellow pictured above to model for me. He's not my favorite model, and I could get tired of drawing him too often, but he's fairly patient and models for free. He probably wouldn't do this for anybody else. He is me.

This was drawn from life using the big mirror over the vanity in my bathroom. The single, frontal overhead lighting (which was also bouncing off of the mirror) was different from what I'm used to sketching, and was interesting to do. I dragged a small portable easel into the bathroom and  laid out my drawing supplies on the vanity counter top. The page in my sketchbook was toned with compressed charcoal rubbed lightly and evenly over the entire sheet of paper. A soft charcoal pencil was used for the darks and a kneaded eraser was used to pull out the light areas by lifting out the charcoal tone. A "charcoal white" pencil was used only for highlights. The sketch took four hours. Did I tell you he was patient?

Since this was sketched looking in a mirror, the image is incorrect in that it's reversed, so I must really look like this:

Does that look different? 

For more about drawing sessions, go to "Labels" on the side bar and click on "sketching" or "drawing."