Self Portrait

[Paul Foxton]

It's time I bit the bullet and posted one of my self portraits for critique. Although each of my drawings only serves to show me how far I've got to go, I think that this one does represent a minor improvement over previous efforts.

That said, please don't pull punches - you could never be harder on me than I am on myself. I will say this though: I'm more concerned about getting the basics right than I am about finish at the moment.

This was done over two 6 hour sessions, in charcoal, from life. If you're interested, I've posted some progress shots on my site here.

Thanks in advance for your time.

[Marina Dieul]

Hi Paul,
This is a nice self- portrait. I took a look at your shots in progress ang was very impress by your hard work and the cartesian way you work. ( the contrary of me : the more I work, the less I mesure, all become intuitive...)
Your drawing seems very good, and I just like you take a careful look at the values, particularly on the shadow side. It appears a little flat to me . I think you have a reflected light from the left ( our left), but it doesn't read like a reflected light because it's a little too light ( under the mouth).I would expect to see more dark accents...
Keep the good job, efforts always pay !

[Paul Foxton]

Hi Marina,

Thanks for the reply. I find I have to measure very carefully - you should see what happens when I don't! Hopefully there'll come a time when my eye is developed enough to trust more, but that's some way off right now, I think.

You make a good point about about the reflected light. I know that my lightest dark should be darker than my darkest light, and that area in particular does look too light now you mention it. I'll bear that in mind on the next one. Perhaps I would have been better off putting the main shadow block in darker right at the start.

Thanks again.

[Allan Rahbek]

Paul,
I think that this is a very fine self portrait, you have come close to the likeness.
You will see that you get more freedom and ease when you have practiced this tight practice for some time.
When you are satisfied with the likeness I would recommend to look at the space around the head and try to incorporate the values of the surrounding room.

[Paul Foxton]

Thanks Allan. I'll bear your suggestion about the surrounding values in mind. Everything I do at the moment is geared towards eye training, to me that's first base. I've only recently started to concentrate on value, and am finding that there's a lot more to it than meets the eye, so to speak.

A good way of practicing with values, I've found, is to do small still life drawings. At the moment I do roughly one a day, small two hour drawings. They're teaching me a lot about relative value and how to deal with the necessarily narrow range of values we can get on paper compared to what we see in nature. At first I was obsessed with matching the values I saw as closely as I could. Increasingly I'm thinking that the picture needs to have it's own logic of value relationships, and that should be worked out at the start. I think it will still be some time before I successfully apply it to a portrait drawing.

Of course, I realise that there are many different approaches, but I think that doing this is helping me to get a more convincing feeling of light.

Here's a pic of one of the little drawings, so you can see what I'm talking about. On this one, I took the highlight on the bowl as the lightest light and worked down from there.

[Sharon Knettell]

Paul,

This a beautifully rendered, thoughtful and unpretentious piece. The nose really comes forward.

Often we go overboard trying to weigh our art down with heavy and portentious meaning. Guilty as charged. It is refreshing to see something done simply for its own-sake.

I like your handling of charcoal. I seem to have a heavy hand with it. What paper and charcoal pencils are you using.

That said, I do think the shadow side is a bit too wide. I use a transparent ruler with grids to measure. It really helps me a lot. It is about 2" wide x 12" long marked with red lines.

[Paul Foxton]

Thank you, Sharon.

To be honest, I have enough on my plate right now trying to learn the basics. There isn't room in my head for meaning or anything else, so I think I got that one by default rather than by design

The paper is just ordinary pastel paper. I've just checked, it's from a Daler-Rowney pad of 160 gsm acid free paper with a grain. Actually, that's pretty funny, normally I avoid Daler-Rowney stuff like the plague, this one slipped through, apparently. I used Coates willow charcoal sticks for that one, but I've just got some W&N charcoal and it seems a lot better, softer and it doesn't have that annoying habit of skipping across the paper without making a mark like Coates does. I don't know if you get the Coates stuff over there, but it's sort of bog standard, found in every high street art shop over here. I've tried charcoal pencils, but I don't get on with them. I find them very unforgiving and too definite, not easy to lift the marks with a rubber when they're wrong, and I can't push it about on the paper so much.

It might be worth mentioning that I stomp a lot, and that I've taken to using a mahl stick pretty much all the time for charcoal drawings.

The small facility I have with charcoal now I owe entirely to copying Bargue plates, I'm pretty sure, I didn't even think of sharpening the sticks before I started those. I used to be of the belief that charcoal was a "big, expressive" medium. Then I saw some cast drawings...

I do believe you're right about the shadow side. I've just been sitting here blocking out a bit of the left side with my hand after reading your post, and the likeness is considerably improved. Bingo. I like the idea of the clear ruler, I'll give it a go. Beats a wonky stick of charcoal, I'm sure.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Sharon Knettell]

Actually Paul, I should have been clearer; all too often artists weigh down their art with pretentious meaning before they have achieved mastery, hoping to disguise their shortcomings with cleverness. You did not.

[Mischa Milosevic]

Sharon it seems your link is not working? I do agree, Sharon, on the pretentious. Its sad that many do not crave and strive for the delicacies of mastery.

Paul, I can honestly say thus, if you continue and not stop, you are going places.

[Sharon Knettell]

Mischa,

You have to go the main Forum site.