My First Self-Portrait

Our second to last project for drawing was a self-portrait in pastels. I was completely freaked out from it. I had never done a self-portrait before, and I had no clue what I was getting myself into. Looking at a picture of myself for long periods of time was pretty unsettling. It made me feel weird and I couldn’t help but laugh at it a lot. I had to push through all of my emotions and insecurities about it so I could get the project done. Even with all of the nerves over it, I was still excited to learn something new.

When I started my drawing class, I knew very little about other mediums besides regular pencils and spray paint. In the beginning of the semester, we used a lot of charcoal. I loved it! I thought it was fun, messy, and at times extremely frustrating. It was just pushing black dust around and trying to control it the best way I could. Pastels are the same exact way but in color! It was weird to go from all the black and gray pictures that we had been doing all semester to color. It was such a great change and something that was needed.

Pastels are a lot like charcoal when it comes to just pushing dust around. When you color with it you leave all this excess colorful dust behind. Smudge that dust around with your finger or a q-tip and you can still create with it. Unfortunately, that is where some frustrations can come in also. Well, a lot of frustrations in reality. I found out very fast that it was hard to get specific details in. I could spend a good amount of time on a certain area trying to get these small details in. Then I would start another area and slowly realize that my arm was smudging my detailed area off. If you are not careful when using pastels, you can erase your own hard work without even trying. This is when the frustrations come in and the self-doubt wants you to stop.

No matter how frustrated I would get using the pastels, along with trying to make my first self-portrait look like me, I never gave up. I would continue to look at my portrait and think to myself, “You did that!” It is truly amazing to see what determination and help from others can do. I don’t know if I will use pastels all the time, but I will definitely keep them for a rainy-day project. I have gotten over the initial nerves of using pastels. I may have even gotten over a couple insecurities with doing a self-portrait. I was able to learn something new, excel at it in my own way, and take that new skill into the future with me.