How To / Illustration

How to Illustrate a Self-Portrait with your pal; Perrin

May 28, 2013
Written by

perrin_portrait

Since I’m on vaca­tion all week, my friends are help­ing me fill the blog­ging gaps. My friend and Píc­co­lo col­lab­o­ra­tor, Lisa, is here to give you a how-to on illus­trat­ing your self portrait!

Pro­fes­sion­al­ly, Lisa goes by her last name, Per­rin. She is an illus­tra­tor, design­er, col­lab­o­ra­tor, entre­pre­neur, and edu­ca­tor cur­rent­ly based in Bal­ti­more, Mary­land. Perrin’s work is informed by the humor­ous and strange world of East­ern Euro­pean Jew­ish folk tales. Vis­it her web­site, and fol­low her on Twit­ter and Tum­blr.

Onward!

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Real talk: I draw myself a lot. I do it to cat­a­logue how I look, how I think I look, how I invari­ably change, and how I draw over time.

 perrin_portrait

attri­bu­tion: dig­i­tal paint­ing and gif by Per­rin with her rab­bit; Blanche DuBun

The self is an obvi­ous point of ref­er­ence and source of inspi­ra­tion. Fri­da Kahlo did it to explore her feel­ings at dif­fer­ent key moments in her life. Your Face­book friends do it with their phones to look cool in front of their cohorts (I under­stand this is called a “self­ie.”) Arguably, this is a key part of being a per­son. It serves as a kind of auto-documentation.

 An illus­tra­tion is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. The pri­ma­ry goal of an illus­tra­tion is to com­mu­ni­cate and tell a sto­ry. So when illus­trat­ing your­self con­sid­er what you want to com­mu­ni­cate through the por­trait. It can be as styl­ized and fan­tas­ti­cal as you like. If you want to show your­self zip­ping out of a banana suit, or tra­vers­ing the vast­ness of the cos­mos because it express­es some­thing about your per­son­al­i­ty or dreams, then this is the place to do it!

Below is a smat­ter­ing of some of my illus­trat­ed self-portraits.

portrait_medley

attri­bu­tion: self por­traits by Per­rin from 2005–2012

Step 1: What do you look like? If you are going for a more con­ven­tion­al like­ness take a moment to study that mug of yours. Prop up a mir­ror or take a pho­to for ref­er­ence. If you want your illus­tra­tion to be less lit­er­al try draw­ing your­self from mem­o­ry or draw what you think you look like. You may be wrong but this is your artic­u­la­tion of your­self so no one can stop you!

Step 2: What do you want to com­mu­ni­cate and artic­u­late to the view­er about your­self? If some­one that did not know you came across this por­trait what would they infer about its cre­ator? Would they get your sense of humor from the banana suit?

Step 3: HOW you will con­vey what you want to com­mu­ni­cate? What col­ors will you use? Will you show the whole fig­ure? Will there be a back­ground? If so, what is it? Make choic­es that will enhance what you want to com­mu­ni­cate and make sense.

Step 4: Illus­trate that busi­ness. Use the medi­um of your choice, be it dig­i­tal or ana­log, col­lage or pen­cil. Stay true to your goals. Enjoy the process of cre­ation. Con­sid­er indulging in this prac­tice every so often to see how your por­traits change as you do.

Step 5: Bask in self-real­iza­tion. Prob­a­bly post to Tumblr.