The Legends League

DAY THIRTY RESULTS:

Face Shape: A little too round on the top and narrow along the sides, but it works with the illustration.

Eyes: The intensity with which I drew the eyes today really captures something about me when I’m in work mode. Even though the eyebrows look a little like the Dark Knight logo, they say a lot about how serious I get sometimes, and how involved in my work I get. The execution of the eyes isn’t the greatest. The details are few. But within the illustration, they do carry a likeness to my eyes in person.

Nose: It’s a pretty good nose, but it’s not totally my nose. The front is too circular, and the nostrils are too boxy and angled downward. The bridge looks far too narrow, and while the shading behind the nostrils is a nice touch, it doesn’t do much for making the nose look more like my own.

Mouth: It looks very illustrative, more like a caricature, but it’s pretty accurate. The lower lip could have used some texture, but as I said yesterday, this formula of drawing my mouth for the 5 Minute Me’s is almost embedded into my brain.

Details: The eyes and the dark contrast of them are what call out the most to me in this 5 Minute Me. Even though it’s not a fine detail to block in a lot of black, it does a lot for the mood of the illustration. If I had to choose an aspect of this 5 Minute Me to say I did the best in capturing detail, it’d be the nose once again. I think I just spend the most time on the nose, so that’s where much of the attention ends up.

Final Thoughts: I’m partially relieved, and partially upset. Knowing that this was going to be the last 5 Minute Me put me in a mode to try to execute something special and write something meaningful. You can see the circles used to map out the head and the nose and the line to map out the eyes. It’s funny how the pressure to draw something amazing got to me today. I was half careful half carefree. But it’s over. And I’m happy that I completed this project and was able to share it.

DAY TWENTY THIRTY PIECE:
Burning Ends To Meet Ends. (written in 4mins 34secs)

I don’t make the ends,
I just make them meet…
will fly for self richness
to enrich the fleet…

will die for no forgive ness but
I’ll live showing my sins.
Only makes sense to tell friends
where my story begins.

And I’m once upon a time,
but I move with it’s minutes,
gorrove to it’s vastness,
past it’s harsh limits.

Blast to break silence,
mast at high sails,
floating to the water
wishing well to the whales.

I do it for the honesty
that’s been in my chest,
and in the end
I’ll be waiting for some rest.

be.
08.18.08

DAY TWENTY NINE RESULTS:

Face Shape: Pretty good, although something about it seems juvenile. Maybe it’s the overall size of the illustration. It’s a little small I think.

Eyes: Not the best execution, but definitely alike to mine in the flesh. The little dent between my eyebrows is pretty characteristic of my ‘unimpressed’ look, and even though not all the details of the eyes were drawn out, the little things like that are keeping me from bashing the execution too much.

Nose: This is a pretty damn accurate depiction of my nose. the shape is good and the size in relation to my face is on point.

Mouth: As with the eyes, the execution isn’t the greatest, but the likeness is bang on in the context of the whole illustration. I’m finding it hard to sway away from this formula of drawing the mouth - shade the upper lip, define the lower, darken the outsides of the mouth, draw in mustache and labret piercing. It’s great for time, but not the greatest for execution.

Details: There’s not too much deep, fine detail in this 5 Minute Me, but overall the illustration works as a self portrait. The nose takes the cake for best in show as far as the details department goes.

Final Thoughts: After yesterdays embarrassing “hexagon face” 5 Minute Me, it’s nice to have been able to draw out something that actually resembles me more than it does guys I disliked as a teenager. My favorite part about today’s 5 Minute Me was writing something for Stace - simple, not wordy, to the fucking point, and honest. Just the way I like it. Sometimes.

DAY TWENTY NINE PIECE:
Giving Everything /Up. (written in 1min 19secs)

You’re worth giving everything up for.

or.

Maybe I need to realize that if I were to really make sense of this all..

You would be the only thing worth all of my efforts.

be.
08.17.08

DAY TWENTY EIGHT RESULTS:

Face Shape: A little pointy on the top. If I just made the sides shorter I would’ve made a perfect hexagon I think.

Eyes: Considering the size of the whole drawing, It’s funny that I drew the eyes as small as I did. The execution is poor - no detail under the eyes makes me look a little more oriental and awake than I do in person, and the lid of the right eye is completely botched.

Nose: Not the worst nose of drawn, not the best, but it’s possibly the most accurate aspect of this 5 Minute Me. There could be a little more detail on the bridge of the nose, but that’s the least of the problems with this illustration.

Mouth: Looks really rushed, as does the rest of the illustration, but it’s not that bad. I don’t generally try to draw in texture into the bottom lip, and I actually started to do that in this one, even though it just looks like scribbles. The size of the mouth could be a little bigger to look a bit more accurate.

Details: There’s not a lot of detail in this piece, and as we’ve seen with some of the rest of the 5 Minute Me’s, the nose gives the most once again in terms of finer execution.

Final Thoughts: It’s funny how much I’ve been over exaggerating some of my features. It’s a comment maybe on how I see myself, and is exactly what I was wanting out of the 5 Minute Me. I think my nose is small, so I draw it bigger. I think my eyes are bulgy and so I draw them smaller. I don’t know that this is something that would happen to someone after drawing a single self portrait, but having done this everyday for 4 weeks, I definitely feel it setting in pretty good and my vision going a little mental when I sit in front of that mirror.

DAY TWENTY EIGHT PIECE:
Where We Go. (written in 4mins 47secs)

Where we go we’ll meet glory for hand to hand shakes,
where (wo)man to (wo)man talks will turn to walks with greats,
and we’ll laugh to side sores about stocks and stakes -
how they don’t really matter.

We’ll dine fine style platters.

Where we go we’ll meet glory for an eye to eye glare,
fine sense of sight, we’ll foresee it to a stare.
We’ll laugh to side sores about the frauds and fakes,
and how all it took to get there was the thoughts we’d make.

be.
08.17.08 (day missed)

DAY TWENTY SEVEN RESULTS:

Face Shape: A little too rectangular and narrow, which is unfortunate, because I think otherwise, this would have been a great 5 Minute Me.

Eyes: I actually really like the eyes in this self portrait. There’s something that’s more connected to me when I see myself have a level of intensity in these drawings versus just staring into a mirror to illustrate my features. Even though they’re not that well done, they’re still a very good depiction of my eyes.

Nose: It’s a little to triangular at the top, but overall it’s pretty accurate. The nostrils are also a little too big.

Mouth: I promised myself I wouldn’t run out of time before being able to draw the mouth, and thankfully I actually made it. It’s not that well drawn considering I generally run out of time while I’m drawing the lower half of my face, but it’s still pretty accurate.

Details: The darkness around my eyes is a telling feature when it comes to these self portraits. The narrow groove next to my right eye is something that I think I should pay more attention to in the future 5 Minute Me’s because its a detail that is characteristic of how my eyes look in actuality. It seems like I’m unable to match the level of detail in Day 17, no matter how quickly I draw or how hard I try.

Final Thoughts: The comfort is coming back, in my writing and in my drawing. This was a big relief. To be able to draw yesterday’s 5 Minute Me and execute and then do today’s 5 Minute Me at this level gives me confidence going into the final 3 days of this crazy project. Today’s writing piece was definitely a favorite of mine aswell.

DAY TWENTY SEVEN PIECE:
Goals in Golden. (written in 5mins 00secs)

We’ve got goals concealed in golden wraps,
but hide them,
tucked in pillows, napped amongst our dreams and
sewn the seam ends;
known to only diary reams
and our
best friends.

Or maybe no one at all.

We keep them sheltered,
shut and muted,
hide the most devine,
consumed with sealing off all the shine.

Like the ceiling does from 9 - 6.

We see them build like
cinder blocks and stick
their means within our thoughts.

And in our golden wraps we’ll find them hidden
when we pass.

But never sought, they’ll never last.

be.
08.15.08

DAY TWENTY SIX RESULTS:

Face Shape: From what I drew in, it looks pretty accurate.

Eyes: The eyes are pretty good. The left eye is the closest to my likeness that I’ve drawn my eyes in a while. The right eye, for the first time, is the feature that I started on in this illustration. I think that this 5 Minute Me is the first one possibly since Day 17 that looks like a person and not a caricature.

Nose: It’s not that accurate, but it is pretty well done. The detailing is nice, though not totally alike to my nose in real life.

Mouth: I’m starting to set a trend here I think - run out of time before getting to the mouth.

Details: The detail on the nose is the best feature on this 5 Minute Me, although it’s not totally accurate. There’s not much else going on for the rest of the face other than the eye quality and the shading on the ear.

Final Thoughts: Finally, a 5 Minute Me that looks somewhat like me. I was getting pretty down about these fucking things and this one has given me a little bit of a boost of confidence. One thing I never seem to comment on in my ‘Final Thoughts’ is the writing portion of the 5 Minute Me. It almost has become secondary to what everyone seems to see, and that’s the self portraits. Today’s writing piece was actually one of my favorites. I hope you like it.

DAY TWENTY SIX PIECE:
A Round Of Applause For Things That Have Passed. (written in 5mins 00secs)

I’m gone
like tomorrow will be a day of reflection,
a moment to be
missed,
for the cold and misted walks through paths
and talks with preachers about the life after passing.
I’ve got passion like the man you find yourself for forgiveness asking,
and I’ve taken lashings,
learned lessons and been double crossed.
I’ve tried,
but am tired of exhausting thoughts,
meddling aimlessly,
and peddling venom and gems to a
‘plain as you can see’ audience whose
ignorance is audible.

And through all the bull
we’ll find yesterday as the time most applaudable.

be.
08.14.08

DAY TWENTY FIVE RESULTS:

Face Shape: The face is a little funhouse mirror-ish, a little Rhymefest-ish, and a little Biz Markie-ish. But this may be an illusion created from how exaggerated in size I drew the nose and mouth.

Eyes: The eye that I did get to isn’t half bad. Too bad it doesn’t look like my eye at all.

Nose: This nose is actually bang on in detail and in proportion. Unfortunately the nose is not bang on in terms of its relative proportion to the rest of the face. A little too big, I’d say.

Mouth: This mouth is also pretty bang on, but again, too big it seems.

Details: The nose is the only part of this 5 Minute Me that got any love in the detail/shading department, and it’s pretty accurate. The rest of the drawing though, not so much.

Final Thoughts: I felt a little more comfortable drawing this 5 Minute Me, and I thought that if I started with a larger canvas, that being the bigger face, I’d have more room to make the features more accurate. Unfortunately it resulted in me trying too hard to make the features large as well and I ended up with a very realistic cartoon of someone trying their best to look almost like me.

DAY TWENTY FIVE PIECE:
Thinking about her made me too nervous to write enough. (written in 5mins 00secs)

She makes ‘happy’ seem like my last beat, so we dance proper
and act uninhibited, a tidbit like we’ve visited too much vodka…
makes my wake up at 8 being late for a meeting seem kinda fleeting
and offers to rub on these feet when I’m back at home.

She makes alone time feel like I should check on my phone line
to make sure I haven’t missed her customizable phone chime.
But she knows that when I need it I’ll still

be.
08.14.08
(day missed)

DAY TWENTY FOUR RESULTS:

Face Shape: Almost perfect. I obviously didn’t complete the chin though.

Eyes: They’re not that bad, but they don’t resemble my eyes at all and they lack detail.

Nose: I was only able to finish half of the nose, but from what I had done it looks like it had some potential. I don’t know, the way things have been going with the drawings I wouldn’t be surprised if I just totally fucked it up.

Mouth: Once again, N/A.

Details: There isn’t much detail in this 5 Minute Me. It’s getting ridiculous. The only thing I can comment on is the mapping out of the shading, but even that is poorly done. I’m getting unbelievably disappointed and discouraged by this.

Final Thoughts: I’m getting so preoccupied with not doing a shitty 5 Minute Me that all of these illustrations are coming out like shit. It’s disheartening and makes my approach to the project one of lacking faith and hollow expectations. I think I need to do the drawings earlier, because I get so caught up in other work I have going on that I’m getting late into the night doing these and maybe the fatigue is weighing into the quality of the work.

DAY TWENTY FOUR PIECE:
Knownliness. (written in 4mins 44secs)

I need to be alone again
and feel the warmth of knowing more than the cold of
assumption
and blank sharing.
Let’s face it, we were closer when we didn’t know each other,
and you were a lot more exciting
when your stories were your voice.

I can’t listen as well as I can imagine

but I’ve heard my story a million times
and frankly
I’m getting bored of telling it to
people with no more imagination than their want to act silly and have fun.

My question is this:
When the fad is over
and your cloaks are worn,
our sky diminished and flags long torn,
how well will you be known when you are not blankly sharing
and we
both are alone?

be.
08.13.08
(missed midnight)