In sophomore year, I took a class on drawing and composition that required all students to create a 30”x44” self portrait. For this piece, I knew I wanted to include fabric as a prominent feature. I was thinking about clothing as an expression of gender at the time and wanted to use fabric as a representation for that. I also opted to wear clothing that I felt represents more of what I want to look like rather than something more ‘everyday’. I took two main reference photos for this piece: one of me holding the cloth and the other of the fabric bunched into a twist pattern. I printed out both photos, then cut the image of myself out to put on top of the spiral background. Since this piece was so big, I opted to use the materials I was most comfortable with: graphite pencils, though I did attempt to use pencils of different hardness, which I hadn’t really done before. In order to accurately recreate the finer details within my reference images, I used a grid. I also tried a slightly different style – accentuating angles and drawing minimal curves – which I think I like. I found one of the hardest parts of this piece was detaching from what I think something looks like and what it actually looks like. The grid method certainly helped, but in smaller areas of the face, I turned the reference image upside down in order to try and see more of the shapes. I think this piece is overwhelmingly successful. There are a million details that I could go back and continue to fix but I think I’m happy with the piece as a whole.