Self portrait

This is so bad I almost don’t want to post it, but it is important to put it up here, because I have to start somewhere.

I drew this self-portrait as the first exercise from the book The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. Its my favorite book on drawing and has been for now, decades, actually, so it seemed like the right place to start now that I am returning to drawing again.

Anyway… after much hedging and explanation, here’s the drawing:

I guess if I have to go looking for something good about this, it would be that I committed to those lines – this is not a sketchy haze of lines. Not that there’s anything wrong with sketchy hazes. I like the way the shape of my face came out. The eyes are weird, and the hair was a problem, but I just kept at it and continued until it looked sort of finished.

Its a pretty rough version of “finished”, but I didnt want to drag out the agony any longer than I had to. And, in regards to this post, I don’t really want to drag this out any longer, either.