Self Portrait #8

When I go on vacation I refuse to shave. I hate doing it, so I don't when I don't have to. The fun part is that each of those days, I take a picture of the progress of my beard. This nine day span was taken when my family and I went to Houghton Lake, MI for my wife's annual family reunion.

Self Portrait #7

"What if my head was an odd shape?", was the question I asked myself when I started this sketch, along with many others. So what I did was draw a set shape and have to fit my features within the bounds of that outline. I have maybe 10 or so using this exercise,  which I actually found really fun. I think I did all of them in about 15 minutes.

Self Portrait #6

A super simplified illustration that I think would be easily repeatable. Also pretty versatile I would think, for use in some sort of meme. Or possibly a web comic. Who knows, maybe this will be what I use if I ever decide to do the web comic posts I have thought of doing. It is pretty similar to lots of other web comics I have seen, so maybe that's not a good choice. 

Self Portrait #5

This is how I think I should look in a children's book, one of those über stylized types done with lots of splotchy water coloring. I couldn't get a good picture of this one from my sketchbook, as is evident by the picture there on the left. So I did the tracing thing again, and I don't hate it this time. Less curved lines helped with that I'm pretty sure.

Self Portrait #4

Another stylized illustration of myself, as you'll notice when I draw myself, the goatee and sideburns are the two things that define a cartoon portrait as me. This face/head shape is not mine, but I was playing with a kind of standardized head shape and adapted it to my features. Using a standardized head shape requires the hair to be the defining feature, because aside from the nose shape, everything else would be the same. I like playing within limitations like that sometimes, it forces creativity that you may be otherwise struggling with. As anyone who is a creator of anything knows, there is nothing scarier than a blank sheet. 

Self Portrait #3

This was my Facebook profile picture for a while and I'll explain its purpose. It is said that in nature, we look for symmetry, and that it's presence correlates to how attractive something is. Nobody is perfectly symmetrical, and the two halves of a portrait juxtaposed like this highlights asymmetry. That's exactly what I was trying to illustrate about myself.

Self Portrait #2

This is a quick sketch of myself, taken from my sketch book. I don't own a scanner or a proper stylus input device so getting here took a keen use of the pencil tool. In this form I actually dislike this doodle.

This is a photograph of the sketch, maybe I'll just do this from now on until I get the tablet. So anyway, this is actually one of a couple done in this style, this clearly being the startled expression. 

Self Portrait #1; Introduction

I plan to, from this week forward, post a self portrait every week. I am not a fan of flattering pictures of myself so the portraits, like the one above, will never be of a well lit smiling face. I imagine most will be a quick cartoon of myself in varying styles of illustration. I am not an illustrator, so expect no gold. 

The reason I dislike favorable pictures of myself most likely has to do with some self esteem issue I harbor, but the explanation I give generally is that I view a proper portrait as a type of selfishness that I don't feel I need to indulge myself in. 

I've been told I'm a contrarian, but maybe I'm just right and everyone else is wrong. I'm sure that's it...