Why Self-portraits?

I am always available and free to model.

I can not complain about the results or the process.

I can chart my progress over time. Maybe one day one drawing will look like me.

I can experiment with different techniques and mediums.

There is a theory that I will get much better at other people’s portraits after doing hundreds of myself.

Before last week I rarely looked at myself in the mirror. Koosje Korne, a teacher online art class called “Seeing” that I am taking at the sketchbookskool.com assigned a selfie a day for a week to be done in five different styles:

• selfies from a photo showing foreshortening

• mirror selfies with harsh lighting and heavy shadows

• contour continuous line ‘quickies’

• from memory/imagination

• fast slow selfie (The fast / slow progress is two drawings done one on top of the other. The first is done quickly in color with large strokes. The second is done in ink for an hour with lots of details.)

So far I have done a day quickies with a fine pen ( https://robintinaysallie.wordpress.com/2019/12/02/self-portraits/ ) and a day of quickies with a brush pen shown below: