The Advancement of a Selfie

Grid portraits are one of my favorite things. 

Pufferfish Kelsey.

I definitely didn't start out like this, though.

Freshman year of high school, I remember learning to grid the human eye and copy it meticulously into my own drawing. Then came my full face. It was my very first time learning what a grid portrait was, and how to grid things in order to make the lines, the values, the everything, exact.

 Sophomore year, I had to make a grid self-portrait in which there was a message and connection between myself and an artist I liked.

Senior year, I didn't really grid any portraits. Rather, I free-handed them all for my AP portfolio (check out the page about it at the top of this page), but my love of portraits still continued. However, I felt rather disappointed with my finished portfolio. As an artist, I felt like I hadn't tried my hardest and done my best work, and it was a very dissatisfying moment.

 In my Drawing 113 class, I was incredibly excited to begin the portraits section. Human faces are so neat, and they always tell such interesting stories with their features: wrinkles and freckles and caterpillar eyebrows and bunny cheeks and wonky teeth and fly-away hair. People are weird and unique and so fascinating to draw.

Things began rather well. My biggest challenge was keeping everything smooth, and pushing the values deeper. This year was the first time I'd ever really used artist pencils (specifically 4B and 6B) because I'd never really thought them important.

I mean, a pencil's just a pencil, right?

Ohhhhh Kelsey.

The finished piece is definitely me. I'm so happy with how the tones turned out, and how all of the textures flow together just right!

It really shows just how much I've grown as an artist in a matter of 4 short months here at Purdue. And I've still got many, many more months of growth ahead of me.

--Kelsey