Drawing Tuesday - Self-portraits

Over the years I've had various encounters with self portraits, including these, found in old sketchbooks -

Self portrait (with contact lenses and good haircut), 1990

1992: "Why did you make yourself look so old?" (Really?)

Collage selfportrait from the late 90s, and (above) glowering c.2009

None in this collection is a self portrait; taken from photographs of friends, they were stitched onto envelopes in the 1990s -

A variety of techniques/approaches thus presented themselves, but I approached the project with some trepidation - and decided to do

Something Completely Different, 

using the glut of Sarah Raven plant catalogues that happen to be on hand (ie, hoarded) for an inner portrait. 

Archimboldo was the inspiration 

Start with skin tones

It's helpful to quickly draw out the main areas

Can't believe this took two hours

The way of working develops as you keep going. I started by looking for "the eyes" and made some that by now are All Wrong. Rethink - do the skin first. With collage, it's easier to start with the bottom layer and work up to the details - how long has it taken me to learn that??

With head and neck done, there remained only (only?) collar, dress, and headdress. Background was hastily painted in. 

Something to come back to - 

(I meant to get back to it, but haven't yet.) btw a rather different Arcimboldo showed up on instagram later and it would really have been a self-portrait if (with my history of avid reading and librarian training and love of libraries and book and - nearly forgot - the book arts MA) I'd used books instead of flowers.

From Carol: I was feeling a little blue today but then remembered that it was beer o’clock time and that the government has said that some foods can be counted as ‘essential religious items’. I’m moving onto the Easter eggs later.!!

From Sue: Here’s my self portrait, sporting my newly made trousers! It was a bit tricky matching the stripes!! There was a tapered section below the knee!

From Joyce:  I’ve been looking at David Hockney’s book ‘Faces’ and he did so many line drawings just capturing the essence of his sitter. That was my inspiration.

From Judith: Complete cheat as done from photo and all those teeth!

From Mags: I took photos of my shadow yesterday when on my walk thinking I'd use them for drawing from today. But instead I stitched on calico, each version going wrong in a different way! 

From Janet B: Drawn from a photo taken first thing in my dressing gown before I’d had a shower or brushed my hair. 

I’ve also attached my only other self portrait and one and only attempt at drawing with my sewing machine. It eventually found its way into a group quilt to say thank you to the departing chair of New Horizons, one of my many quilt groups. Luckily mine wasn’t the only bonkers one. 

From Jo: Is it cheating to do a self-protrait from behind!! Anyway - this is me every day.

From guest artist Helen: