A Quick Block In of a Self Portrait

Greetings and Salutations Everyone!

In today’s post I wanted to share this quick block in of a self portrait I finished yesterday. Just like I discussed in some of my previous posts concerning drawing, block ins, and poster studies; I thought it would be a good idea once again to show by example of the benefits of simplification (less being more).

With of course using myself as the model and with the use of a mirror, I began to construct the block in very lightly with the use of only straight lines first marking my top, bottom, and midpoint through the use of a skewer. Creating this block in as close to life size as possible made for comparing the big blocky abstract shapes to observation easier. While juggling these loosely measured big simple shapes, I am constantly reminding myself to always squint. You almost can’t seem to squint too much! We must not forget that the eye and mind has a tendency to want to stare into the smaller forms and break everything faster than it should. It’s crazy to think how the mind behaves sometimes. Always remember that once the bigger issues and shapes are locked in, the mind has this tendency to fill in the details.

Once I established the bigger shapes, I then began to map out the core shadow shapes. I have to admit that this part was a little trickier in that I felt that there were quite a bit of form shadows that were melding into some of the edges of the core shadow. I would say that squinting helped immensely in this part of the block in as it forced me to make some executive decisions in establishing some of the terminator lines of the core shadow.

I then started to mass in the core shadows, eyes, my beard, and hair. While doing this I kept in mind to keep the values of the block in clean, unified, and compressed.

Please feel free to let me know what you think?

Thanks for reading Everyone!

-James Hansen
https://jameszenartist.weebly.com/