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.