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Description
You have no idea how nervous I am about this.

I once heard that every traditional artist should draw 6 things. 1) a plant. 2) an animal. 3) architecture. 4) a female nude. 5) a male nude. 6) a self-portrait.

I decided to kill two birds with one stone. I was going to wait until I was in better shape, but one day when I was feeling particularly happy about who I am I thought, "Why not do it now? Why not do an honest portrait and show the human body less-than-perfect such as the kind of body most of us have?"

And an odd thing happened. The more time I spent working on it, the more I was forced to look at the reference photo objectively. After a while, as I started liking the way the drawing was looking, I started liking the way I looked! I even had a thought that I won't repeat, here, but suffice it to say that I've never felt that way about myself in my life.

Before I started this project, I would have rated my body as about a 5. Now, I'd go as high as 8, maybe 8.5. You may not agree, but that's irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that it did boost the way I feel about myself.

I highly recommend that everyone draw or paint a self-portrait nude, even if you never show it to anyone. Seriously. Try it. You can burn it when you're done, but I guarantee you'll see yourself differently.

As with any other model, please show respect in your comments.

Prismacolor on tan cardstock (and I'm never going back to white paper, ever).

P.S. the face was too smal to get details with the colored pencils, so I touched it up with mechanical pencil.

Description
You have no idea how nervous I am about this.

I once heard that every traditional artist should draw 6 things. 1) a plant. 2) an animal. 3) architecture. 4) a female nude. 5) a male nude. 6) a self-portrait.

I decided to kill two birds with one stone. I was going to wait until I was in better shape, but one day when I was feeling particularly happy about who I am I thought, "Why not do it now? Why not do an honest portrait and show the human body less-than-perfect such as the kind of body most of us have?"

And an odd thing happened. The more time I spent working on it, the more I was forced to look at the reference photo objectively. After a while, as I started liking the way the drawing was looking, I started liking the way I looked! I even had a thought that I won't repeat, here, but suffice it to say that I've never felt that way about myself in my life.

Before I started this project, I would have rated my body as about a 5. Now, I'd go as high as 8, maybe 8.5. You may not agree, but that's irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that it did boost the way I feel about myself.

I highly recommend that everyone draw or paint a self-portrait nude, even if you never show it to anyone. Seriously. Try it. You can burn it when you're done, but I guarantee you'll see yourself differently.

As with any other model, please show respect in your comments.

Prismacolor on tan cardstock (and I'm never going back to white paper, ever).

P.S. the face was too smal to get details with the colored pencils, so I touched it up with mechanical pencil.