“You”

This is my first self portrait in over a decade. I pushed this back and overthought this portrait for about 2 years. I avoided it as I knew doing this would force me to open up with myself and the world. To actually portray how I feel using my own image and I think that might be the scariest thing for me to do.

It is done with a ballpoint pen on an illustration board. I spent 10 weeks and a little over 400 hours to complete it. The tedious part was the hair which took somewhere around 60 hours. The medium forces that amount of time out of you if you want to be as meticulous as possible.

This is my attempt at hyper realism with a ballpoint pen. I have been practicing for years on smaller projects producing what I would refer to as photo-realism. I don’t think differentiating between photo-realism and hyper-realism matters, to me those phrases are a way for me to understand that there are levels to the amount of detail you can produce in your work. This, I would say, is the first time I have crossed the threshold and produced exactly what I believe my skills are capable of producing. Previously on smaller works I would have to choose details not to include because of time restraints, size restraints, or simply I wasn’t capable of correctly shading or coloring the drawing correctly. I went into this project knowing I would spend as much time as I was capable of spending on each portion of the drawing. I would say I am overall happy with the outcome. I feel as though I learned a lot and have gained a lot of experience. I cannot wait to do another large piece.