Drawing Exercise #2: The Dreaded Self-Portrait

Look in the mirror. Draw what you see (and feel). Don't hold back.

Jan 22, 2025

∙ Paid

On New Year's Day for the past 10 years, I’ve used my 'warm-up sketches' time to self-flagellate with a self-portrait based on the previous year’s mess.

It’s the only time I do it, thank Christ. The style depends on whether I’m at the drawing board or sitting at the Cintiq that morning. I’m usually hungover, tired, hungry, or a spicy cross-section of this ugly triumvirate of self-loathing.

I don't meditate much on these; I just plonk myself down, start drawing, and see what emerges. It’s usually a reflection of my feelings about the year that just passed and what I might expect for the year ahead.

After the relentless firehose of grief these past couple of years, including the three D’s: Death, Divorce, and Downsizing, I figure this expression captures the vibe of the year and the creative process of drawing this year’s self-portrait. I can barely manage more than a smile that invokes something between ‘help’ and ‘Because of course this happened now. What else y’got?’

Although speaking of the Creative Process, I should shout out

Huma

for bringing the great Hayao Miyazaki’s creative process to my attention.

Feeling very seen…

You do you:

Today, I’m challenging you to do your very own self-portrait after the year of 2024, and what 2025 portends — How did it feel? What expression would best capture it? Is it great? Is it terrible? Try it and share it with me on Notes, In the comments below, or if you don’t want anyone else to see it, email it to me privately in reply to this email. I'd love to see what you come up with.

Here are some of my previous years’ efforts:

2023:
After much grunting and grousing, this fell out of the pencil this year… I chose to channel the very specific, life-changing moment this year when I first laid my eyes on a Bloomin’ Onion at Outback Mistakehouse. I’m so upset at what happened next.

2022:
A frantic mess of book deadlines, comic strip problems, endless texts, DMs, email threads… a frazzled mess of a year.

2021:
Trepidatiously opening my eyes to see if another pandemic year is over.

2020:
Pretty obviously the end of a harrowing ordeal of a year: Becoming overly familiar with masks, gloves, and social distancing. Coming out the other side of a battle for my lungs.