Self Portrait

Over this past week, I've drawn a self portrait in my sketchbook.

The pencils that I used were:

B
3B
4B
5B
6B

I find that 'B' is a good pencil to start off with when shading in the skin tones, because you can go fairly light and fairly dark. In this picture, because of how dark I had to go on the right side of the face (I'm facing a window, with sunshine 'hitting' me in the face, so the lighting contrast was quite severe!), I used the softer pencils to achieve the darker side of the face.

The 'B' pencil is also a good strength for lightly drawing your first lineart, as long as you don't push down too hard. You can draw very light lines, and they are easily erased if/when you need to.

For this drawing, and most of the drawings I will be completing in the future (I imagine), I have used a technique of shading known as 'circulism'. This is drawing an
d interlapping lots of little circles, to achieve the desired skin tone. I didn't use any tools to blend the skin tone in this drawing, I achieved any blending and the skin tone with just my pencils.

For the t-shirt, I used crosshatching.

I think I'll be drawing a fair few self-portraits in the future! Drawing my own face is a brilliant exercise, since I see myself (in the mirror) every day.

What do you think of my self portrait?