Self-Portrait Progress Post #1

The first thing I did was establish the base tones. With ink I have to remix every color each time I start, which can make it difficult to match tones correctly every time. I needed to establish what shade would correspond with the darkness in my photograph. I also learned from my artist copy that as soon as I tried to apply blocks of color, I would lose the outlines I drew earlier. This turned my portrait into a mess as I could no longer correlate what was in the photo to where that spot was on my paper. By lightly going over my outlines first, I hope to avoid that problem. For depth you only need three values, which I currently have as the black (that I think I made too dark), and the two shades I used for the wood, with the paper acting as my lightest shade. I will need to actively work to preserve the areas that need to stay light, another thing I struggled with on my artist-copy. Another problem is using my artist mark, as I can barely focus on that when I don't know how to use the medium. While the black I did in the back matches the value of my photo, there was not that much contrast in my artist copy. The lines right now are also too sharp, so I might need to spend some time darkening what I have in order to decrease the contrast in the piece,