I cropped yesterday’s photo (Draped Bust) purposely to create ambiguity: Was the sculpture of drapes, or was there an underlying sculpture covered by a drape? The sketch below is a sketch of the uncropped photograph.
I’m having fun renewing my acquaintance with sketching. Just a few pencil strokes can shade more effectively than spending lots of time carefully perfecting dark-to-light gradients. Now, my challenge is to tighten up on the spatial relationships among facial features. If you look back on other quarantine self portraits in this series, you can see […]
I looked carefully at one of Cézanne’s sketches of his son. I think he sketched the shapes that made up the face, not facial features. This is a different way of sketching, a different way of seeing. We’ll see how it goes.
The other day, I treated myself to a book about Cézanne, one of my favorite artists. I was inspired by his spare sketches, to concentrate on broad pencil strokes rather than replicating details. The study below is not Cézanne-esque, but is, perhaps the start of a new direction for my self portrait sketches.
I have difficulty with portraits where the subject is only partially facing me. Most of the features on the far side of the face are hidden, and must be rendered as isolated lumps or bumps, with no visible connection to those which are visible.
I broke the routine today, and put on my photographer’s cap, to design the self portrait below. Placement of the image adds to the mood of the photograph, or in this case, the sketch. The way I framed today’s self portrait gives the image a claustrophobic feeling. This is a good way to convey the […]
Most (if not all) of my quarantine self portraits have used a photo booth (app) photograph as reference for my sketch. Today I flipped the camera to selfie mode to take the reference picture. The resolution was much higher and I could zoom in for a close look at details. One can tell from the […]
