For this exercise I was asked to create two interesting images of my own head. 

I started this exercise by looking at myself in the mirror and trying to complete some quick 5 minute studies of my head. I tried to put my head in different positions in order to draw different angles. Below are my drawings.

For my first drawing I used charcoal and chalks, however this ended up taking me much longer than 5 minutes as I couldn’t get it to look like me, I kept working and re working it until it did resemble me. For my second drawing I was adamant it needed to be a quick study, so I tried to be less precious about my marks, and it did end up looking more like me than my first drawing. For my third drawing I decided to use biro, there were less options for mistakes aside carrying on with a biro so naturally I was quicker. This drawing was a fairly good likeness except I made my eyelashes too long. 

My next task was to complete a longer more detailed drawing of my head. I worked again with charcoal and chalk on white paper. My drawing was of me looking straight on. I started my drawing by blocking out my features and the approximate shape of my face, I then started to add tone by adding dark and light areas and thinking about the direction of the lines on my face. Below are the different stages of my drawing: 

I worked and re worked with my charcoal and chalk to try to show the texture of my skin and try to show the form of my head. 

Below is my drawing: 

In the end I do feel like this drawing does actually look like me, however I did find that because I had so many layers of charcoal, the white chalk was less effective. Next time I need to try to use the white paper to show the lighter areas as it should look brighter and more effective. Also I have drawn my eye lashes too heavy and this takes away from the realism of my drawing. I also think my hair needs more work, it looks very two dimensional as it is and I could do with building up my tones in order for it to look more realistic. 

For my second drawing I used a blue biro, I had already experimented with a biro in my quick initial drawings and this worked fairly well. I wanted this drawing to be completely different to my previous drawing so I put my glasses on and a hat and turned my face to an angle. This entire pose was wholly unflattering but I felt it would be both interesting and a challenge to draw. I found this hard. I found using a biro to build up tone in order to show form on my face hard. I have used biro before on townscape drawings and on quick figure drawings but it felt difficult on a portrait.  I tried to to keep my pen moving around my drawing and I tried to keep working in shadows and lines. I found however that my lines were too obvious and it felt messy. I feel like to make it look better my lines need to be more refined and sensitive. Below are the different stages I went through:

Over all my drawing does look like me (on a bad day.) However I think my biro lines have added quite a few years on me. I am pleased with my use of shadow in the drawing particularly the shadow my glasses are making and that I have managed to show texture particularly in my hair and areas of my nose. However the area between my nose and lips is wrong and I have made my nose and chin area look quite masculine. 

I found this exercise difficult as I know my face very well, therefore I was highly critical of all of my mistakes, however after completing my portraits I feel more confident to continue and excited about my next portrait.