Day 8: Self-Portrait Day

I have to admit, I kinda didn't get this day. I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to just simply take photos of myself and post them online, or if I had to actually draw a self-portrait too. So, in a sense, I did both. Well, I didn't post the pictures online on that day, last Friday. But I did take pictures, so I could draw myself. And I will post them on this blog entry. Well, the 'most revealing one', as asked for in the book. Plus, the self-portrait I did. I'm spoiling you guys!

Before any tasking could take place, I had to hand in my essay in the morn, so it would finally be completely, 100% out of the way. Forever! Until I inevitably have to retake it... Nah, I doubt I'll have to retake it, I was pretty proud of it. Although the deadline was 12.00, and I handed it in at 12.00 exactly. So hopefully it will still pass. Given how shit the weather is at the moment, I should imagine that mitigating circumstances should be allowed. Not that the fuckers at the Uni let us know, but oh well. I swear education organisations are unorganised on completely new levels of unorganisation amongst organisations. Or something like that. I planned to meet my Uni friends after I handed it in to have a celebratory drink (even though I'm going a month sober, so I'd have had a J2O or something). But the student bar, where we'd planned to meet, was closed, and I didn't have their numbers. So this never happened. Oh well.

Later, for more celebration purposes of course, I hung out with Jay, Kate, Meech and Chris. We went into town during utterly BEAUTIFUL weather, and went around buying general goods and services. Actually, I don't think any services were bought. Simply goods. But I wanted to use the phrase 'goods and services'. I went into WHSmith, where I got a nice, fine pencil and an awesome pencil sharpener which has a clicky bit to push if the lead gets stuck 'tween the blades. Because I genuinely didn't have a pencil sharpener, and my pencils were all shit. I was truly prepared for self-portraying now!

We then headed to Jay and Kate's. 'Cos I'm a terrible person, I can't remember much about this night, again. Seriously, there is something wrong with my memory. It is akin to that of an amnesiac goldfish! But I do remember watching '8 Out Of 10 Cats' and finding it funny. And then 'Celebrity Big Brother' came on, which seemed like a good excuse to do my self-portrait. In all honestly, I don't mind the show, and it was fun making jokes about Lady Sovereign getting trapped in an alternate dimension after being replaced by Ivana Trump (that name never gets unfunny) during a magic trick.

Earlier that night, I took a couple of pictures of myself. I took my usual 'pull a stupid face to hide my insecurity about how ugly I am' photos for a while, a serious photo just to see what it would look like, and lots of photos of me flashing the biggest smiles I possibly could. I was told they weren't smily enough though, so I did a photo that looks like I'm laughing maniacally. This represents the true me, as apparently I laugh a lot. Which I'm pretty happy about, so I decided that this would be what I would base my drawn portrait off of.

Above: The true me.

I'm not very good at drawing. I used to be, as a kid, but I stopped doing it, and then all my magical drawing skeelz disappeared. Sad times! So I approached doing my drawing with trepidation, I was kinda embarassed having to do it around people too. But it didn't go too badly. I mean, it wasn't good by any means. And it was embarassing. But it could have been worse. It was quite easy to draw, and whilst my sense of proportion and my teeth in the picture are completely fucked, it's probably the best thing I've done in quite a few years. So, not too bad.

I showed my friends the picture, which they all said wasn't too bad after laughing and spitting at it (those last bits aren't true), and Kate couldn't resist adding her own stylistic touch, my hunky, toned body resting tiny under my head. Which was supposed to have pecs but they ended up looking more like boobs. So Kate defined the boobiness even more by giving me a bra. Then Jay, added, naturally, 'The Destroyer', with an arrow pointing at my genital area. She stopped short of actually drawing the Destroyer, but seeing as it is a thing of myth and legend, we can't ruin the illusion by showing people a true portrayal of it...

Above: Head by me, body by Kate, Destroyer by Jay

Later, I stayed up talking to Jay about... I dunno what we talked about. Music I think, plus just about everything and anything, it's impossible to stop us once we start. Until we were both virtually falling asleep. Tiredness is the only thing stopping our long, long chats! By 4 in the morning I was super tired, and the weather outside was shit, so Jay encouraged me to sleep at theirs on the couch, which I did. Once Maxi (if I've spelled that right) had stopped rattling his cage like crazy that is...