Michael Nobbs

Tag: Selfietember2026

  • Three self-portraits and a question to take away

    A loose black ink drawing fills most of a cream sketchbook page. My bald head is seen almost straight on, with oversized rounded glasses, a long nose, small moustache and scattered beard marks. The eyes look slightly in different directions and the right ear is drawn prominently. The outline of my shoulders and T-shirt curves around the lower part of the portrait. Underneath, in hand-drawn lettering, I’ve written: “Drawing myself from memory.”

    Three self-portraits this morning. One in a pocket sketchbook as soon as I’d made my morning tea. A second with the mirror turned away, drawn from memory. And then a third, bringing the mirror closer and trying to find ways to really look at myself again — interrupting the habits and repeated visual language I’ve built up over the last three weeks of drawing my face.

    I wonder what would happen if, for the rest of Selfietember (and beyond), I keep finding small ways to make it difficult to draw the Michael I already know?

    The little folded sketchbook rests on a crocheted blanket in front of my round mirror. The portrait shows my face within a circular frame, with blue glasses, dark shading around my head and orange clothing. In the mirror above, the top part of my real face is reflected, including my bald head and dark blue glasses. Behind and beside the sketchbook are the green teapot, drawing pencils and pens, all gathered on the cloth-covered tray where I’ve been working.
    The drawing stretches across the two-page spread of a handmade folded sketchbook. My face is enclosed within a large circular outline, with dark blue glasses, a long nose, small moustache and beard marks. Areas behind either side of my head are filled with rough black shading, while my clothing is picked out in orange and red. Beneath the portrait I’ve written: “5:00am awake from a pretty good night’s sleep after an impromptu trip to town for fish and chips yesterday evening 19-9-26,” with “night” crossed out and replaced by “evening.”
    The sketchbook lies on a crocheted blanket beside my drawing tray. The black ink portrait is visible on the page, with the words “Drawing myself from memory” underneath. Nearby are a green teapot, a mug, a round tabletop mirror and a cluster of pens and coloured pencils, giving a sense of the early-morning drawing session taking place around it.
    The sketchbook is propped beside a round wooden-framed mirror. In the drawing, my face is large and slightly tilted, with one eye especially prominent, dark pencil marks around the head and red-orange colour across the clothing. In the mirror beside it, part of my actual face is visible behind a yellow phone: bald head, dark blue glasses and orange clothing. Pens and pencils lie on the tray below.
    A larger, looser drawing fills most of a cream sketchbook page. My head is drawn in black pen and pencil, with large glasses, an enlarged right eye, a broad nose, moustache and beard marks. Dark pencil scribbles sit behind the left side of my head and near the top right of the page. Across the lower part of the drawing, my clothing is described with a sweeping black outline and rough red-orange coloured-pencil marks. The portrait feels less symmetrical and more fragmented than the previous drawings, with the different materials visibly interrupting one another.
    A wide overhead view of the bed and drawing setup after making the three self-portraits. In the foreground, a large open sketchbook shows the black ink portrait drawn from memory, with “Drawing myself from memory” written beneath it. Farther up the bed, the small folded sketchbook is open to the coloured self-portrait with blue glasses and orange clothing. Between them is a crowded drawing tray holding a green teapot, mug, milk jug, the round wooden-framed mirror, loose pens and pencils, and other drawing tools. An Oxford English Dictionary lies partly under the smaller sketchbook, and an open fabric pencil roll filled with pens and pencils sits at the top right. Everything is spread across a large crocheted blanket made from blue, turquoise, cream and muted reddish-brown squares, giving the scene the feeling of a well-used, slightly chaotic early-morning drawing camp.

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  • A broken pencil at 3.00 am

    A close-up of a small homemade sketchbook page containing an early-morning self-portrait. The face is partly drawn in black with bold blue glasses, dense black hair and a red area at the bottom of the page. The handwritten note at the top reads, “3:00am My pencil broke so I stopped. I’m not sure I’m going back to sleep.”

    I was following my current early-morning drawing compulsion of pouring out my tea and reaching for my mirror and sketchbook. It was even earlier than usual — 3.00 am today — and I’d rather have still been sleeping. But the rule seems to be: I wake up, make tea and draw myself. So that’s what I was doing.

    When the pencil broke

    Midway through drawing, the lead of my pencil broke. I’d been using a rather lovely old and waxy Derwent Drawing pencil in Ivory Black and enjoying the heavy, pastel-like quality of its lines. It was as I was working the pencil hard, drawing the now familiar line of my mouth, that the lead simply crumbled. In that moment, the spell was broken and I was able to stop drawing.

    I realised I liked where the drawing had ended and decided to leave it where it was. Switching to a pen, I grounded the drawing in the moment with an early-morning report in the corner.

    I think — and this is new — even though the drawing was “unfinished”, being forced to stop meant my compulsion to draw had been quenched and I was able to relax into being awake and drink my tea.

    A second drawing

    After a little while, I reached for my newly started A4 Fabriano sketchbook and began another drawing, not because I needed to, but because I wanted to. This time I drew slowly, probably for about an hour, stopping regularly to enjoy my tea and notice the sound of the rain on the window above my head.

    Something interesting happened with this drawing. The self-portrait was drawn first, with the now-sharpened Derwent, much as I’ve been drawing them these past couple of weeks. But then I switched to my broad-nibbed Kaweco Sport and returned to the very familiar language and materials of my tea-tray drawings. It was as if these two, until now separate ways of drawing, met for the first time.

    At 4.20 am I added a few words to ground this drawing too: It’s raining hard. I’m awake and drinking tea and thinking I might just make a second pot.

    In the end I didn’t. I fell asleep instead.

    A small homemade sketchbook resting on the bed beneath a round mirror. The page shows an early-morning self-portrait with bold blue glasses, black hair and a red area of clothing. In the mirror above, my face, yellow phone and green teapot are visible. Handwritten text on the drawing begins, “3:00am My pencil broke so I stopped…”
    An A4 sketchbook open on the bed beneath a round mirror and tea tray. The page contains a large self-portrait framed by the outline of the mirror, with black hair and glasses. Below and around the portrait is a blue chicken-patterned tea-tray mat, drawn in pen and Neocolor II. A handwritten note at the upper right records being awake at 4:20am, listening to the rain and drinking tea.
    A close-up of an A4 sketchbook page showing a large self-portrait inside the drawn outline of a round mirror. The face has black hair, glasses and loosely drawn features. The lower part of the page is filled with a blue chicken-patterned tea-tray mat, with small hens picked out in black, red and blue.

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  • Have I been looking or remembering?

    A blind contour self-portrait drawn in black ink across two pages of a small sketchbook. The face is loosely constructed from overlapping, wandering lines, with glasses, eyes, nose, mouth, chin and one ear emerging from the marks. Handwritten notes at the bottom read “Mostly with my eyes closed” and “Blind blind contour drawing!”, with the date 16-9-26. The sketchbook rests on a colourful crocheted blanket, with a dark blue pen lying beside it.

    I haven’t been following the Selfietember prompts very closely, but this morning I was curious to try yesterday’s: Close your eyes and draw yourself.

    No mirror needed today, of course, and the drawing became essentially a blind, blind contour drawing.

    What interested me most was how familiar parts of my face felt to draw. I almost always begin my self-portraits at the left side of my glasses, then sweep up and around the frames towards my right ear. Even with my eyes closed, that route felt familiar. So did my nose, mouth and chin.

    It made me think about how much of my recent self-portrait drawing may now be coming from memory — or perhaps muscle memory…

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  • Finding comfort in the uncomfortable

    A wider view of my early-morning drawing setup on a crocheted blanket. My black pencil self-portrait sits open in a small homemade pocket sketchbook beside a short yellow Blackwing pencil. Behind it is a tray with a round wooden-framed mirror reflecting part of my face and glasses, a green teapot, an orange Stanley mug of tea, and a small ceramic jug.

    At the moment, the act of drawing isn’t a comfort to me; it’s more of a compulsion. However, there are ways that I draw that can add comfort to the act.

    Today, I reached for one of my familiar homemade pocket sketchbooks and drew with an old and rather weather-beaten Blackwing 3.

    As autopilot took over and I began to draw the face in the mirror, there was a definite sense of “ahh” that softened the usual anxiety around making the first marks on the page.

    Close-up of a black pencil self-portrait drawn across an open homemade pocket sketchbook. The drawing shows my head and shoulders, with large round glasses and a patterned top. The fold of the sketchbook runs horizontally through the middle of the face. A short yellow Blackwing pencil lies beside the sketchbook on a crocheted blanket.

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