The sketching activity challenged me because, while I have some experience drawing from life, it’s not something I do very often. I find myself trying to draw from multiple angles/perspectives, and trying to focus my sight into one view is difficult. I enjoyed practicing my cross-hatching, and I’m glad there was a time-limit, because I tend to get carried away with that and make my drawings too dark. This was good practice for the self portrait because I thought about how I’d like to extend the techniques I tested here onto a digital platform, and how I’d like to change it. For one thing, I think the cross-hatching can get a bit muddy unless one is very careful, so I went with mostly one-directional line shading in my final portrait. The one-directional lines are challenging as well, because one must be very precise when attempting to build up shadows.

I am not very happy with this sketch, but then I’m never really happy with any sketch I do. If I could change something about it, I’d erase the shading on the face and spend more time making her skin and facial features look more realistic. I think she looks a bit like she’s wearing a mask, they way I’ve done it.