For my self-portrait I was inspired by a book on Lucien Freud – Etchings 1946-2004. One image from this book is of an early etching he did in 1947 of his future wife Kitty. He titled this work – Girl with a Fig Leaf
I found this an interesting graphic image as a whole, I think due to its simplicity. It is also interesting that each element is differentiated by the nature of the etched marks – the flesh of the face consists of stippled dots, the fig leaf is given form by simple hatching. The squiggly lines of the hair really denote the difference of texture.
I decided I wanted to attempt a portrait using simple lines, dots and other marks. I made numerous attempts before I managed a portrait I was happy-ish with. My previous attempts failed for a number of reasons, but each basically boiled down to my overdoing things. I am a little averse to precision in my mark making as it takes methodical repetition and much patience that I am not sure is in me. The main issue for me in this exercise is that I would overdo the marks and end up like I had strange marks or a rash on my face. I also experimented with adding water with a brush to add more tone. In this case I concluded I would need to use the inkpen more sparingly, as too many ink marks resulted in very dark ink washes and consequently very dark portraits. After I had worked through the numerous attempts I decided to keep to minimal marks and just use pen (no wash). I ended up using a fine-liner and here is the result.
