Day 11 - A portrait

Saturday.

I'm exhausted. Spent the last hour or so trying to draw self portraits with oil pastels. I'm not happy with any of them so I can't post any - which makes me a little grumpy. I know that the point of the exercise is not to have something to show for it but to spend time with the paper and the subject (my mug). But still. Argh. By the last one I was pretty much stabbing the paper with a crayon and attacking my mug on it. Zen me no zens.

All things considered it has been a good Saturday. Had a call with Komeil to hang out, and ended up sitting for two hours for a digital portrait drawing session. As he was testing out his Skype screensharing for future classes, I saw the portrait come into being on Photoshop, which was a pretty interesting process.

Said portrait. It is fascinating to see a representation of myself through someone else's eyes. Being intimate with the process of creation leads me to have soft spots for some little details of the drawing - there's a smudge of red on the left cheek (my left) that I really like, and I like the green on the shoulder as well. I love the lines in my hair, and I like how delicately the right ear is drawn. Even though the background is white, I know that it used to have lines and colour which have since been painted over.

Arrrgh I want to make something!! I told Komeil that I wanted to paint the landscape outside of my balcony before the trees by the road got tall enough again to block my view. "Surely you can paint faster than the tree can grow," was his teasing answer. Surely I can.