Contour Self-Portraits

Charcoal pencil (2B)

                      Black Conte

Bamboo brush and ink

Sharpened stick and ink

        This is probably going to be the quickest homework assignment we will have all semester. The physical undertaking was relatively easy and fun, but my portraits each turned out a scribbled mess. I should have done what Angelique did and practiced getting familiar with my facial contours in my sketchbook. I didn't know for sure if we were supposed to include the contours of facial features, but I attempted to anyway because it made sense to me to include them. Sadly, you can't actually make out any of these details on my drawings. They kind of remind me of Picasso's drawings, but that wasn't the goal, so I'm embarrassed about putting these on the wall in class today. By the way, I don't know which 'gauge' my brush is, but those lines were incredibly thick. On two of my drawings, I was so dissatisfied with the initial result that I used the extra white space to try another self-portrait next to the 'terrible' one. It looks like my eyes and my hand still aren't cooperating with each other.

By the way...

I ran into Professor Fred Burton in the library today, and asked him for some research advice pertaining to sketchbooks (particularly in IPC).  Toward the end of his good advice, he advised me to look up an artist called Peter Beard for good examples of dedicated sketchbook-keeping.  After a bust on ARTstor, I "Googled" him, and the first link was to his website, www.peterbeard.com.  I clicked on the link to some of his 'selected works,' and they were spectacular.  I don't know what is meant by "gelatin" as a medium because I'm sure he doesn't mean he used the gelatin we eat, but I don't know.  Any way, he actually smeared some blood on parts of the pages as part of the composition.  I'm assuming it's real blood, but I wonder if it's his own... Each page was occupied by a black-and-white photograph of an African animal in its native surroundings, blood smears applied like soft pastels, and extensive notes written in ink, surrounding the photograph as a frame.  This covered the whole page.  I didn't look at but a handful, so I'm sure all the rest don't have all the same materials because on of the last ones I looked at didn't.  But the theme among the ones I viewed was unified.  Beard currently lives in Kenya, but he's originally an American citizen.  The site also mentioned him as living in New York, so I assume that means he stays in New York for a time and goes back to Kenya as his main residence.  If you get a moment, check the site out.