The SELF-Portrait Party

like whitney said last year, "learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all." so, in honor of valentine's day, the portrait party will celebrate the greatest love of all with an entire month of self-portrait parties. draw yourself. share the results. self-portraits will be posted until midnight on february 28th.

(feel free to share your portrait swaps also. i will resume posting them in march.)

rama hughes

i originally drew this self-portrait as an example for my middle school students' animation class. i liked it so much though that i adapted it as an example for d.i.y. notepads and stationary and it's a portion of the illustration for the fliers for my after-school art workshops.

thanks, everyone for participating in the self-portrait party! you can resume sharing your proper portrait parties at your leisure.

lucie geffré

this is lucie's contribution to the portrait party. lucie was born in france, lives in madrid, and runs a trilingual blog that you might enjoy!

bethany vanderputten

bethany made her self-portrait to hone her photoshop painting chops.

angie pickman

angie created this self-portrait with cut paper. good job, scherenschnitter!

steve morrison

steve is the one on the left.

tim clary

tim drew his self-portrait as part of a moleskine portrait exchange.

dave mckean

i almost forgot to post a CELEBRITY self-portrait this month! d'oh. good thing i found this one while packing. dave mckean, one of my all-time favorite artists, drew this self-portrait comic strip for a german magazine. you can click the pic to see a bigger version. it was his response to their question "where do ideas come from?" in a written post script to the comic, mister mckean added:

"usually i go to this great mexican restuarant i know. i sit in the corner all afternoon when they're empty. i doodle in notebooks, and eventually order a plate of mixed ideas with a side order of salsa picante.

"if i'm really stuck, there's this address in basingstoke i write to, enclosing a stamped addressed envelope, and they send me a small bag of ideas at a very reasonable price."

martin stankewitz

martin drew his self-portrait for a squidoo lens on self-portraiture. it's worth reading!

cindy woods

our friend cindy passed away three months ago today. this dual portrait of her sister, wendy (above), and herself, cindy (in the mirror below), is both a self-portrait and an illustration of one of her final portrait parties. cindy's final days were filled with art. you can see it on her website, learning daily.

jeannette jobson

jeannette drew her self-portrait and a couple of others as part of a forum challenge.

betty wilkines

betty couldn't decide if she should post her self-portrait on her own site much less contribute it to the self-portrait party. thanks, betty, for finally deciding to jump in with both feet!

chris davis

chris just happened to have two self-portraits ready just in time for the self-portrait party. talk about your synchronicities!

rama hughes

come to think of it, gang. here's a self-portrait you can try: draw yourself old! find the wrinkles in your face. imagine what you might look like as a great-grandparent or a centenarian. i drew this as an example for a project with my second graders and it was an e-m-o-t-i-o-n-a-l experience. very worthwhile though. i found my dad and my grandpa in my face and my compassion for them exploded. it made me determined to smile more too :) i want better wrinkles than this when i turn 88.

cathy gatland

julie invited cathy to the self-portrait party. cathy did a couple of self-portraits and wrote a sort of confessional description of her process.

it spoke to julie's self-portrait and echoed a conversation that i've had with lots of people lately: drawing from old photographs or doctoring new portraits to look younger or prettier. in the wonderful book, griffin & sabine; sabine says "it's the artist's prerogative to take liberties with her self-portrait." i agree.

in my opinion though, there's a greater beauty to be found in staying open to what you see in the mirror. there's a lovely little poem about it:

I wish I knew the beauty of leaves falling. To whom, to whom are we beautiful as we go. To whom are we beautiful as we go. - David Ignato

that's almost the point of a self-portrait, isn't it? not to demonstrate one's self but to discover one's self. julie and cathy's portraits are a great example. they opted to draw from current photographs and they struggled to show themselves as they really are. i admire that.

julie oakley

julie felt duty bound to produce a more up-to the minute portrait after i used a portrait she’d drawn from a thirty year old. of this new drawing, she wrote "of course the reality of the fifty year old woman looking back at me in the mirror is very difficult to reconcile with the mental image i have of me being about twenty-seven. So the results are confused to say the least. if you’re interested in tackling these conundrums yourself rama is holding a month-long self-portrait party here, and everyone is welcome."

alright people let's dig in! this actually is a great topic.

jannell summers

school's out today! but, to make sure that this party stays G-rated for my many students who are watching this month, this is not the self-portrait that jannell submitted to the party. i snagged another one from her flickr though. hint hint.

christine castro hughes

christine surprises me now and then with a masterful love letter. for example, her valentine for me this year was a pop-up card. from the outside, it's a portrait of me. when i opened it though, her self-portrait sprung out of nowhere to kiss my face. holy moly!

christine castro & rama hughes

an unexpected illustration royalty afforded christine and me a new button maker! woohoo! among other things, we used it to make these sets of self-portrait button giveaways.

penelope dullaghan

our illustrative girl friday, penelope, had a beautiful baby girl today! congratulations!

p.s., yes, this is a self-portrait.

atara s.

atara is one of my students. she drew this self-portrait as a piece of mail art for her art class pen pal, amanda woodward.

anita davies

anita is making a thing-a-day. several self-portraits among them!

david r.

here's a kindergarten contribution to the self-portrait party. my student, david, whipped it up in a matter of seconds. when i asked him to color it, he rolled his eyes and went back to the crayola box.

josh sutcliffe

josh and his chicken, lunch. "And Lunch is what she will be," he adds, "If she doesn’t start laying some eggs."

dusik

what's a dusik do?! from four self-portraits, i selected this one to extend the mystery.

andré caetano

andre is the artist who contributed about a billion self-portraits to last year's self-portrait party. the new one is tops by the way!

mrana

mariana got her sister to take some photos of her at various angles so that she could draw a self-portrait to perhaps replace her old avatar/icon. then i hunted her down to ask if i could share it on the self-portrait party. says something the power of an avatar, huh?

julie oakley

julie was reluctant to share this because she drew it from an old photo. a self-portrait is a self-portrait though! especially when it looks this good.

laura park

can't you almost hear a twisted bluesy lampoon of "i can show you the world" beating in the background of laura's most recent self-portrait? most of her work is a self-portrait actually. in comic strip form.

matana s.

matana, one of my students, labored over this self-portrait. it is heartbreakingly perfect.

nicholas jackson

thanks, nick, for getting the self-portrait party off to a great start!