I spent sine time working on sketching the self portrait photo to learn more about my own face.

So… yeah. That�s about how that went. Halfway through drawing, I decided that I had the perspective wrong. Rather than start over, apparently I just decided to change angles, and now my face is all deformed.

This sketch was done without any kind of under drawing. I just started trying to draw the major shapes, and filled them in. As you can see, that doesn�t work. You need some kind of skeleton, some scaffold beneath that you are drawing in If for no other reason than to remind you as you draw what the planes and angles are.

So I tried again,

This was actually coming along nicely, until I started working on the left eye. I ended up making the left eye looking in a different direction from the right eye. I should try this again, and start with the eyes, after I draw the scaffold/skeleton/whatever you call it.

I also got the expression wrong on the lips-and as a result it looks like I�m about to cry.

So, my first sketch looked like Sloth from the Goonies. My second sketch looked like the BTK killer.

I�m not going to become a police sketch artist any time soon.

Because my sketches were so terrible, I resorted to tracing again. After all, this exercise is supposed to be about negative shapes, not drawing. Clearly I need more practice drawing, but since I also need practice with thisnegative shapes thing, I felt OK with the tracing.

I think it�s time for me to put the paint brush and pencil down before I hurt someone.