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.