May selfies

I remain disciplined about my daily (Mon to Fri) self portrait. So here is a selection from last month:

Since I am not too enthralled with the paper in the sketchbook for doing watercolours, I have taken to doing more pastel work using the three colour restraint. Most of the time I use my fingers as a smudging tool…

Feeling a little bit Star Wars-y on May 4th, I picked up the fineliner pen and let the Force be with me here. But in all seriousness, I have been taking the left-handed looseness to heart in my sketches.

This sketch is done with a graphite stick, using both the side and the pointy ends to get some sort of shading and likeness.

As a rule, since I hate it, I never paint with brown (or its ilk). But this day, the unused cake of the loathsome colour in my watercolour palette called to me and I thought I could just pretend it was sepia ink.

Despite my complaints about the paper, I couldn’t resist the three-colour restraint in watercolours. “RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!”

Good old 8B pencil being put to use here.

Another three colour restraint but with the monotone colours of white, grey, and black. It doesn’t look like much smudging happened here!

Pastels are much softer when finger action has taken place. I chose my three colours as I tend to do. Though my hair is generally brown, I am in the habit of painting it red or purple, but it seems to be lightening with age, even seeming blonde sometimes, hence the yellow — but I think this added a fourth colour to the mix.