Um, here goes… thirty self-portraits done over the last few years, usually late evening when I can’t find anything else to sketch to keep up the daily habit… I’m really quite a cheery soul, but the combination of staring into a mirror, and doing these late at night makes me look both dour and wrecked! But self-portraits are a good discipline, and you’re sketching the one life model who shouldn’t be too offended by the results. In some of these I can see traces of family members, in others a slight inaccuracy of line angle or distance has completely altered the likeness. My weight apparently waxes and wanes between sketches, my age seems to wander from twenty to eighty, and my nose grows and shrinks. But the glasses, eye-bags and lack of hair are always the same…
I’m an Urban Sketcher…
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Two days sunshine, heatwave!A couple of wisterias; Chinese on the left, Japanese on the right? Spot the foolish mosquito that interrupted my sketching... #mostlydrawing #bathurbansketchers #botanicalillustration #urbansketcher #urbansketchersSame tree (magnolia ‘umbrella tree’ in Bath Botanical Garden) but different media: ink on left, carbon pencil on right. #mostlydrawing #urbansketching #bathurbansketchers #botanicalillustrationStarted this on one dog walk, returned another day to finish it! Bosky tree in Vicky Park.100+ people sketched this week, mostly in Bath, mostly fude pen dipped in grey/black ink, all funThe first eleven for this year’s challenge to sketch 100 people in one week. #oneweek100people2020 #usk #bathurbansketchers #mostlydrawingCategories
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Fabulous! One of my blogs is a collaborative project on self portraits:
http://strataoftheself.wordpress.com
I wonder if you would give me permission to share some of yours there?
Credit given and a link back to your blog.
Hi Ashley, thanks, and I’m very happy for you to share on your blog. Ed
Thanks, Ed. I’ll let you know when I post anything. 🙂
Excellent! Nothing so self-illuminating as multiple self-portraits!
Tina
Thanks Tina, the truth is in there, somewhere! Ed
I do these too, and even post them though I look crazy in them. Do you know that Winston Churchill said, on the subject of painting, “Once you begin to study it, all Nature is equally interesting and equally charged with beauty.” I think Churchill left the portraying of himself to other artists, though, so that may have been his blind spot. 😀 I love the variation in these, posted side-by-side I imagine they give a good estimate of how you really look.
Thanks Viktoria, I hadn’t heard that Churchill quote before, very true. If you could overlay all the pictures they’d make a fair approximation of my face… Ed
The last two are very recognisably you – brilliant!
Ta Kelsa, and they’re the two oldest pictures there. I’m not sure what that signifies, probably very little! Ed
This is the most awesome post of the…..ever! You are so lucky to have done this for yourself!! I do think I have a very clear idea of what you look like, 😉
Many thanks Rebecca, the collection keeps growing so I’ll post more soonish. Do you do self-portraits? Ed
no Ed…..for the sake of mankind, I resist. But it is an awesome thing….I have done one now and again and am always horrified…..I did a drawing of my mom this summer and was quite pleased with the resemblance, but she wasn’t….
Brilliant, Ed! Would know you anywhere! 🙂
Thanks Jules! It must be the glasses… See you in October. Ed
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