Mirror, mirror on the wall~ who's the prettiest of them all?

I have always had bad luck with hosting and domain servers. The previous company where I had my main portfolio websites hosted, ended up charging my card without my consent, reason why I left. Now I have to remain in a free hosting company, mainly because I cannot find any company to completely trust. In any case, I believe I have found a good free deal which, even though gives me the terrible url-ending of ".t15.org", seems to work quite well. The websites are available on the left bar next to these entries, and one can check them out if wanted.

That said...

I love Stabilo pens for sketching!

Before not so long ago, the thought of drawing an actual self-portrait never ran through my mind. Maybe because I just didn't see anything useful or interesting in doing a self-portrait..."I see myself in the mirror enough times" is how I used to think. Until I had one teacher whose class started with a self-portrait assignment. Nothing more, just a self-portrait. Brought it to him the next day, all nice shadows in pretty charcoal shapes, and the only thing he really had to say was: "Who is she? Re-do it, and this time draw yourself." (he had a weird sense of humor, sort of like mine - or the lack of it anyways, maybe that was the reason why afterwards I started to actually enjoy it) Blunt as he used to be, he basically said the drawing had nothing to do with me. Funny part is that according to my last teacher before him, I was always good at portraits...of other people.

The best part was that I had already heard the same critic coming from my roommate at the time, who said the drawing was pretty, but she had no idea who the hell I was drawing. She said I had a "white person complex", because I had drawn myself looking like a white person (I'm mostly part native and african - yes, african, even though I'm not very dark skinned).

I never liked my eyes and the huge curves above them. They make me look like a little bug of some sort, or a doll whose eyes were pushed into its plastic skull and never came back to normal. Not only were they weirdly shaped, but they are also not the same size. I have one eye bigger than the other due to a medical condition, so you can imagine I didn't really feel like portraying *that* on my self-portrait (besides, the chances of someone thinking I got the sizes *wrong* and *not* on purpose were pretty high). Nor did I like my big chin, which still looks weird to me after the operation (it's actually a fake chin made of aluminum...long story). Oh yeah, and my forehead: I really think it's too big for the rest of my face...

...so you can imagine how much fun I had re-doing that self-portrait. It's funny to me, even though I looked at myself in the mirror every day, I still hadn't really *seen* how I looked like.

Self-portrait sketch, Jan. 2012

In this course alone, we had to do...about 6 self-portraits, all of them with its "re-dos" and "re-makes". Little number, but considering the time frame and the content of the course, that was actually a big focus on self-portraits...most of the class didn't get why the teacher would chose such an assignment, but in some ways, I can understand where he was coming from. It's funny...I never thought I'd doodle *myself* randomly while being bored in a metro station, but here I am, posting my second sketch with my face on it.

I still don't like my eyes, but I try to always draw the curves and the depth of them...though I still cheat on its size (of course I draw them the same size! Common, even you would think I made a mistake if you saw the eyes different sizes without reading this entry).

Random sketches, Jan. 2012

"White person complex". Sort of like those personality checks one does by doodling anything on a paper during childhood...I wonder what so more can be said about the rest of my drawings.

 M~