Self Portrait

On the first day of the course we were given our first mini assignment- an A5 Self Portrait, Medium of our choice.

I had a a couple attempts at this, first using pencil, then black biro pen, but I wasn’t satisfied with how it turned out. After some thinking I decided that the thing I didn’t like about them was the lack of colour. I took multiple photos and did a few sketches before I figured out what to do.

Recently I have been doing some work with colour and displacement and decided to take a similar approach using blue and red (colours that when mixed make purple, the colour of my hair.) but after some thought I realised this wouldn’t work due to the amount of detail a full portrait required. It was while holding up my page trying to figure out a different approach that i noticed the light shining through the page, making it appear translucent. Inspiration hit and I set to work.

These are the finished drawings, and the finished piece viewed with light shining through from either side of the page.