Who is Gerry Bryceland and some of his painting thoughts? Drawing with graphite is a less messy material, which is an advantage if you don’t feel like finishing a drawing, then having to spend a fair amount of time scrubbing your hands, arms, and cleaning up your work area. There are different levels of hardness available with graphite pencils, which gives you the ability to make light marks, as well as deep shadows. If you need to lay down a lot of graphite to establish shadows, or for your background, you could use powdered graphite. There is also water-soluble graphite available that you can use to create beautiful washes that can add a unique element to your self-portrait. The one main drawback of using graphite is the reflective sheen it produces in the light.

Before starting, here’s a personal tip: Place a mirror in front of you and look closely at your own facial features as you draw your portrait. Why, you ask? Your face is the most familiar face you know, you see it every day of your life and have unknowingly practically memorized all the vital details, so much so that you more or less know if you’re getting the proportions right or not. Now, you’re ready to start! The important thing to keep in mind in this first step is to have a good sense of the space on your paper where you plan on drawing your face, so that you can plot out the optimum placement of your subject that will make for a good composition. There’s nothing more frustrating than spending so much time perfecting your drawing, and then belatedly realizing that you ran out of space.

Gerard Bryceland‘s tips about portret painting: Facial hair like eyebrows and eye lashes are usually the same color as the hair on the head, but they are painted more delicately with the smallest brushes. The underpainting in these areas is simply a darker shade of skin tone. The soft texture of the hair on the eyebrows and eye lashes is slowly built up with delicate strokes of a thinly mixed ivory black. It is very easy to overdo these features, so you should start by applying a few strokes, then stopping to check the effect. Apply a few more, then stop and check again. Continue this process until you achieve the satisfactory density of hair for the eyebrows and eye lashes. It is often better to omit the lower eye lashes which tend to obscure the the tone and consequently the form of the lower eye lid.

What makes a good self-portrait drawing? That depends on what type of picture you are trying to create. Do you want a self-portrait that looks exactly like you? Or how about an abstract or expressionist portrait that captures your personality? No matter what your intentions are, or what type of self-portrait you want to draw, drawing a self-portrait is something of a right of passage for every artist. Even if you don’t plan on drawing figures, as an artist, you should still take the time to explore your own face and use it to create a unique and insightful piece of artwork.

About Gerard Bryceland: I’m Gerard Bryceland an artist based in Maidstone Kent and regularly get commissioned to do work doing paintings and portraits of people and their families. I’ve always been an artist from my childhood, I loved drawing my friends and family initially just to mess around with my friends and had a lot of fun drawing them. But as i got older it really just became a business as my friends and their families would want me to do family portraits and that type of thing. With word of mouth word gets out and before you know it you know it I’m 35 and still doing the same thing.