Last summer I babysat one or two days each week for a little girl who has autism. We did a lot of different things together– playing on the playground, in her mom’s yard with the hose and a slip and slide, watching movies on rainy days all those good things, but mostly her favorite thing was to draw. In this regard we got along famously.

She was an amazingly expressive artist for a six-year-old. When her people were happy, you could tell they were happy, when they were mad, it was more than obvious (she’d  more than mastered angry eyebrows). For the most part, she drew people, and she liked me to do the same, so we would draw ourselves going to the beach, or swimming in a pool, or visiting her mom at work, pretty much everything.

As such, I got quite a lot of practice drawing myself, and found that it’s actually a lot of fun! So ever since then I have actually been my own main subject. It’s kind of silly, but I get a weird satisfaction from representing myself on paper (or in Photoshop).

This is one of my favorites so far. It’s of me using my super powers (rainbow opera mouth laser I guess? Sounds good to me.) which was inspired by a picture a friend drew for me.

Since last summer I’ve been a little unproductive as far as art goes though, having drawn very few things in general never mind self portraits. However, yesterday I started a new one! Which I’m fairly happy about. I haven’t finished it yet, but expect it will match or exceed my previous favorite, and am excited enough that I want to share my work in progress, hence this post.

So, no head or arms yet, but I can’t wait to finish it up some time in the next few days! (Also yay for super cute nautical-ish stripe dresses and cardigans in general!)

For reference, here is a fairly of horrible picture that I took in the car after my choir rehearsal yesterday afternoon, of myself wearing the outfit shown above:

(Ignore the weird look on my face. It’s a combination of the fact that I was taking a picture of myself with my cellphone in the car, and that I’d just blinded myself with a flash two or three times with previous attempts.)