M2M Day 47: Intentionally defacing my self-portrait, because…

This post is part of Month to Master, a 12-month accelerated learning project. For December, my goal is to draw a realistic self-portrait with only pencil and paper.

Today, my self-portrait progress is broken into two parts:

1. Finishing the sketch
2. Defacing the sketch (a.k.a. adding tonal values)

Finishing the sketch

Yesterday, I was able to sketch about 80% of the portrait. Today, I just need to add the final details.

I start by blocking in shadow areas near the mouth, on the forehead, and on the neck.

Then, I darken the hair and eyebrows.

I add detail to the eyes, and the portrait jumps to life.

Finally, I detail the ear, which is one of my favorite parts of the whole process. (Ears are just weird looking and fun to draw)

With the ear done, my sketch is complete.

Interestingly, this completeness is a bit problematic: Because the sketch feels whole (and, from my perspective, represents an interesting, standalone piece of art), I struggle to continue working on it.

The portrait just feels balanced at this point. As soon as I start adding tonal values, that balance will be disrupted, and won’t return until I’m nearly done with the whole portrait.

It almost feels unnatural to add tonal values to the sketch, as if I’m defacing something I worked hard to create.

Nevertheless, I must continue. So, here I go… Time to temporarily deface my work.

Defacing my portrait

I start by blackening one of the eyebrows. This is easy, and hopefully will help me build momentum.

I continue with my black pencil, darkening the other eyebrow and the hair.

I can’t seem to easily get the hair to be one smooth black mass. Instead, the grain of the paper is very noticeable, giving me a nice salted look. Even after aggressive blending with a blending stump and a dry brush, I still can’t get the material distributed nicely on the paper.

I may need to invest in some powder graphite (but I’ll return to this later).

Next, I start on the prominent eye. This is where the real defacing starts, as it’s going to be a while until it doesn’t look like I’m wearing makeup.

After many more minutes of work on the eye, I stop for the night. I’ll continue more tomorrow.

Read the next post. Read the previous post.

Max Deutsch is an obsessive learner, product builder, guinea pig for Month to Master, and founder at Openmind.

If you want to follow along with Max’s year-long accelerated learning project, make sure to follow this Medium account.