Fall Self Portrait | Posted: Nov. 11, 2016, 1:45 a.m.

Media: Mechanical pencil, edited with Photoshop CC 2015

Time: ~1 hour

Yep, this is the piece featured on the homepage on this site!

I had been drawing a lot of rough anatomy sketches around the time I drew this piece. I decided to take a break at the time and draw a quick semi-realistic portrait. This piece is based on a selfie I took around Thanksgiving.

Halfway into the piece, I realized that I was idealizing several of the facial features (changing the shape of the brows, increasing the eye size, and smoothing out the nose). I decided I liked the semi-realistic feel and tried to continue the effect with the remaining elements (shirt and hair).

Because I have dark hair, it is sometimes difficult to discern individual hair strands in photographs. I blocked in the overall shape of the hair before discarding the reference. I then played around with patterns and while filling in the hair.

I used Photoshop to add the white highlights.