A self portrait

I hate self portraits for a lot of reasons. For one, I am very bad at drawing faces. What other object can you think of with such a precise placement of details? If you draw, say, a shoe, it's not going to matter if the laces are slightly too far apart, or if the tongue doesn't stick out enough, or if the sole is a millimeter too thick...it will still look like the same shoe. However, if an eye is slanted slightly at the wrong angle, or if the nose comes down a hair too far, or if the curve of the lips is wrong...well, it just doesn't look like that person at all. I am also very bad at drawing my own face. I've never been 100% sure what I look like. From what I can see in photos, my face seems to be constantly changing shapes. Sometimes I think I have a rounder face than I do, sometimes it seems longer, sometimes more pointed, sometimes not pointed at all. Some people know EXACTLY WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE and draw themselves all the freakin' time. I am not one of those people.

I also hate showing my self portrait to people. I'll labor over something until it seems right to my eyes, and then I hold it up and ask: "Does this look like me?" I hate that question, because when the person inevitably says "No," it seems like they are criticizing not only my drawing abilities but my face at the same time. Sometimes I just want to keep my self portraits to myself and just imagine that my face really is shaped like that and my nose is smaller than it really is. But of course, that defeats the purpose.

I tried everything I could think of to get my face right this time. I went as far as to put plastic wrap over my mirror and trace my features. Just as a guide, you know. It didn't work. After measuring and measuring and tracing and charting and staring at my face for hours and starting over a few times, I came to this conclusion: screw it. I decided that it was less important that this portrait looked exactly like me and more important that it had life and vibrance and didn't look like a death mask.

And what do you know? It kind of worked. Does it look like me? I'm...not entirely sure. Probably not. But, I think it's a better picture. And I kindasorta had fun with it. I didn't do any charting, any measuring...I drew the lines right into Photoshop and then moved everything around until it seemed right. I love how you can do that on Photoshop.

Then I drew a demon because y'know that's what I do.