Portrait Progress

Seeing as how the last post had more recent portraits, I thought it would be good to show you how my portraits used to be. In my view, it's a pretty dramatic change from freshman to senior year.

The order is top left, bottom left, top right, bottom right, center. They're all done with pencil except for the third one. The first one I did freshman year and it was my first "real" self-portrait. You can see that the eyes are too big, the mouth too harsh, and the nose is just odd. Ironically, I made this portrait look kind of like my mom (not that the previous descriptions describe her). The next one was part of my manga/anime phase. Everything I drew had something to do with manga, self-portraits included. The third one is in charcoal and is the largest one (about 18x24 as opposed to 8.5x11). This was done during sophomore year. And the fourth one was homework, again done in pencil. It's still one of my favorite past portraits. The last one I did end of junior year and it's one of my best. It's a less traditional portrait because of the angle and the inclusion of a hand and an object. This was done with weighted pencils (HB-8H), thus adding more contrast between light and dark. You can see a big change, an improvement, from the first one to the last one. Portraits are still my favorite subject to draw and paint and I will be doing others later on.

~Kira