two

We were going to do something different for Eli's two-year pictures.
Go somewhere we've never gone before.
Remember the big barrels I mentioned when we took Jonah's pictures, but we didn't go there? I had decided we would indeed go there after church on Sunday for Eli's new pictures; the sky was overcast so it wouldn't be too bright, and it was just a block from the chapel. Even though it's been done before, it would be new for us, and I was kinda excited about that.
But there was a problem.
We went to the property as planned, and I was just getting into position, telling Eli to say "cheese", when this mist of tiny of bugs rose up all around us! Smaller than gnats, these insects also plague us near our home on occasion, but I'd never seen them in such quantities. And they bite! I'm pretty sure some got in Eli's eyes right when I was taking the picture, then we made a run for it. I spent the next ten minutes trying to brush the microscopic pests out of my hair and off my clothes. It was annoying, but I was even more annoyed that we couldn't take our pictures as planned!

























Since he was already dressed how I wanted, we still took pictures that day...just in the same tried and true spots we've been for all his sibling's photos. We went to the stairs, and the rodeo grounds. Like any two-year-old, Eli had a hard time holding still for these and we didn't get many good ones:

A.



I like the top two, though the left is a little blown out
(dark in the face and too light on the wood!)

All of our really good pictures so happened to be in the same place where we took Jonah's good two-year-old photos. I imagine it's greatly because he can't get off the stool where I set him (though he tried) and the light is filtered pretty good, even though the sun was going in and out of the clouds. This first group has most of my favorite pictures. Especially the top two! I have a hard time picking between them: the left one has a sweet smile and perfect lighting, the right one is his really mischievous grin.

B.



This second group turned out good too. Joseph's favorite is in this group; he likes the bottom left one the best. As for me, I think the top left is fun (he was asking me to get him down)...and the bottom right is his "model" look.

C.

























We then came down from the rodeo place, and walked over to the red shed where we took Josh's pictures last year. I figured his shirt would work well with it. we got a few cute ones, but he didn't want to stay put for very long.

D.






 

Finally, we walked under the pow wow area, where I hoped to get a few with the nice grass around him. We got one where I got him to hold still by hugging the pole, but then...



























this happened. Stinky cat! Eli was obviously done, though he did find a nice leaf that came from who knows where.



Yes, he's stepping on the cat's tail in the next to last photo.

At least Eli had fun! And didn't get scratched up like the last time he met a strange cat.

Oh, and if you were wondering, no, Eli doesn't have a bruise on his forehead- its some kind of birthmark! As far as we can tell, it appeared around his first birthday, though it took us about six months to realize it wasn't just a bruise because it never went away. Yeah, we're observant like that.

Which one do you like? 

self portrait

Perhaps you have seen my  recent self portrait, completed last month. I wanted to do another drawing along the lines of the one with Elora, and I had been thinking about all of the other pictures I took that same day. I was considering combinations of mediums again, thinking of attaching other elements to a base drawing, though I still didn't have a complete idea in mind. More and more I kept thinking of this photo, and one night I pictured it like this, partially in color, partially black and white. I don't know why, but it seemed perfect!

 

It was the first portrait-type drawing I've been excited about in a long time. I liked the moodiness of the scene, and I even liked how my hair wasn't done and was getting frizzy from the humidity, so it had a less 'posed' look about it.

I made the same mistakes I almost always make on a self-portrait: I tend to make my face too long or too skinny, and no matter how hard I try to catch it early on, I don't notice until everything is sprayed with fixative and I can't change it. Still, it kind of just makes it seem my own drawing style, right?

As I was working on it, I realized I hadn't done a real self portrait in years, and none where I look like I do right now. When I was in school, self portraits were a regular assignment in art classes, we did at least one in every class, if not more. I was looking through my art files and found quite a few of these, both assignments and drawings on my own. They are all very fascinating studies on my various hair-dos ;)

For instance, this was from a yearbook photo from my Freshman year. The chin is not too bad, though you could argue it's more a portrait of my hair than anything else:

 

 

I'm not sure if this was drawn when I was a Sophomore or Junior , but the face is a little too round to look like me, don't you think? The only part that really looks like me is the hair again. Drawing those darn glasses always messed me up.

 

 

We did these Prismacolor portraits in my Junior year art class. The cheeks look a little weird, but we were drawing our portraits from mirrors, and only had the 12 color set of pencils, so I was pretty proud of it.

 

 

We did some interesting self portraits in my college classes. This one was done completely out of fingerprints, using an inkpad! (Sarah, didn't you do one of these?) I believe we used mirrors for these as well.

























This was done in my first painting class, and was the first portrait I ever painted in oils. Not too bad, I thought. Though I could've probably taken out the flash reflection on my glasses from the photo reference. Also...long forehead.
 It's been so long since I've done an oil painting (all my supplies would have to be bought new and I'd need to fix my easel if I wanted to do one now) that this is probably as good as a first attempt I might try today.

Another oil painting from a photo. I wish I would've worked harder to make the stars more realistic, but the face looks cool.

























And of course there are the dramatic self portraits from my senior show. I took a bunch of photos with blue and orange lights for these paintings. It is called "Precariously Perched". I loved it when I did it, but now I see lots of things that I would fix- the giant florescent-light halo, the lame stars (again), the entire face on the angel version...I like the big evil face though.

 

My blogger avatar is probably the last real self-portrait I did and I was pretty happy with it. I finished this in 2003, before I started dating my husband.  I just wish the texture of the paper didn't show up so much in the photo.

 

 

Of course I have dozens of drawings that aren't officially self portraits, but I'm still in them. I found these little drawings last time I visited home; they're some of the oldest ones I have, dating from 1991. Isn't our family so cute?

 

And I have some cool drawings from college like this:

















Have you ever had to draw a self-portrait? Right now, I still like the most recent one the best.