Monday, January 10, 2011

I'm Almost 28 and Almost Had a Beard..

I was in the mood to draw today, but I was not in the mood to move. I had my trusty camera, a piece of old mat board, a white Prismacolor Art Stix, and some Sharpies (<--cool website) in reach and at my disposal. I snapped a picture of myself and this is what I came up with.



My favorite part is the background. I normally dislike my backgrounds in most of my work so I figured I'd blog about this technique more than the actual art. It happened by accident. The mat that I used was sitting on the floor, in my bedroom, propped up against the wall. I did a few small drawings on the back, around the time I got it, but nothing ever came of it until now. When I tried to erase the pencil I used to sketch my face, the background started erasing too. The mat was whiter than it had appeared a second ago. My guess is the dust around my room began to settle on the board, over the past few months, causing it to become discolored. I figured I could use this to my advantage.

I finally got up and grabbed my Staedtler Tub Point Sharpener so I create graphite dust to smear onto the background. My fingers were dirty and black by the time I was done that it reminded me of being a kid in Kindergarten finger painting. After washing my hands, I removed the filler to establish some highlights for my shirt. The background was now plain and dark which made it stand out. I used the eraser to scratch lines into the midtone to mimic the diagonal lines I used to create my face which also created the variation I needed. This piece only took about two hours to complete, but overall I like the turn out.. except my left eye looks a little lazy. Other than that, time well spent.

1 comments:

Taylor S Smith said...

Really cool, man. Inspiring, too. It's so easy to do just draw the way we're comfortable (at least for me, that is) and it's really fun to try something new and just go with it. I really like the reds and the greens mixing together in the same line dirrection, too.

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