Attempt To Replicate Stanley Spencer's Style

In both these responses I have drawn myself—an attempt to replicate Stanley Spencer’s style. Prior to drawing these responses, I had my photo taken. The source of light was shone on the right side of my face, and was limited to imitate the shadows in Spencer’s self-portrait. These responses link to the artist which I am studying as they both feature the use of self-portraiture, something that was typical and common of Stanley Spencer. I aimed to capture the same mysteriousness associated with Spencer’s 1914 self-portrait. After I had a series of pictures taken, I printed the pictures off and proceeded to draw myself using only pencil. I had used both HB and HB4 pencils to draw these responses, and the reason as to why I had used only pencil was to get used to and familiarise myself with the feeling of drawing self-portraits as I have not had much experience drawing portraiture. There are a variety of reasons as to why I chose to use pencil as the medium, the first one being that it is a somewhat forgiving medium, and that there isn’t any drying time. …show more content…
I trimmed the image to make it even, and once I had done this I ensured the piece of paper I was using was the same size as the photograph to not only make it less challenging, but more accurate as well. I divided the paper, and then began drawing, looking carefully at the proportions within the individual squares. If I was to do this response again, however, I would make both the image and size of paper bigger to make drawing the features easier and less challenging. Yet again the eyes in this response are bigger, thus giving the response an imprecise look. Something I do like about this response is the accuracy of the face shape and hairline—with the use of the grid method, they are much more precise than freehand response. I will develop this experiment further using oil paints to replicate the style of Stanley