Self Portraits

Oh man. If you've met me, you know that mirrors are really interesting to me, the movement, the complete and subtle reversal, the duplication of light... If I were on a desert island, and I had a mirror to talk to, I would be pretty happy alone. And, ugh, people think it's tied to vanity but it's not. It's more of an interest in the unique meta awareness of a situation that you can glean quickly and effortlessly by checking it in a reflection. 1st person POV (visually, obviously) is very, very valuable, but there is another level of info available if there is a mirror, or a non-backlit window, or something.

I am kind of really over mirrors right now. We had 3 weeks to do 3 self portraits: One gestural, one contour, and a large tonal one. I stared at myself for. so. long. Probably 10 hours over the course of a week. By the time I got to the tonal one I was working from a photo for the rough shapes, which of course worked horribly as I then had a reversed image from what I can see in the mirror.
I am just happy and dreamy in this one. At in class evals everyone said I looked dreamy and childlike.*
We were required to do a 3/4 turn pose. Many of the 3/4 poses got called "glamor shots" when we did the critique, including mine. It is not supposed to look glamorous, but it is supposed to show off my tiny tooth, which I have on only one side.
The more I look at this the more I like it. It is honestly my 4th version. I liked it because I often use line in kind of a fluid, messy way to convey something, but in this I was really precise. Even my eyelashes are individually in the right places.

I did kind of enjoy working on these. Self portraits are interesting to do, and frustrating. I would have liked to do only closeups with the help of a magnifying mirror, but that was not the assignment.