I'm SO Vain...

I probably think this blog is about me...
Haha but really! I feel so vain after doing a life time of self portraits. A self portrait is like an art autobiography. Rembrandt, one of my favorite painters, did more than 90 portraits of himself from the start of his career in the 1620s to the year of his death in 1669. I haven't done that many, but I've done enough that I feel vain when I showcase my art!

I remember attempting self portraits all growing up from memory, from mirrors, and from review mirrors on vacations. It wasn't until I was sixteen that I did a really respectable one using a photograph and grid method. In high school, I did a self portrait of me in a broken mirror (see slideshow), and a quick sketch of me falling asleep reading a textbook...which happened all too often! Then enter college. O MY. My first and last assignments of both my drawing classes were infamous self portraits, plus all the in class ones. When we were assigned to bring pictures of ourselves in El. Art Methods, I knew what was coming. Self portraits are a staple for art classes, why would this class be an exception?

This self portrait assignment taught us different methods of drawing which yielded different levels of accuracy. I already had a self portrait done via grid method, so I decided to turn that one in rather than do another one. Here's the two I did in class, and a myriad of other random recent- ish self portraits. (click to enlarge)