SelPortrait – Snip, Burn, Solder Blog

Sketch of the Week: Young Dali (Sept 9, 2024)

My best sketch from Week #37-2024 is this one of a young Salvador Dali:

Pencil sketch of a young Salvador Dali with slicked-back hair, a pencil mustache, and patented Dali Crazy-Eyes (tm)

My reference for the sketch was this picture of Dali and Man Ray I stumbled across on the Library of Congress website:

A picture of Salvador Dali and Man Ray, both giving Crazy Eyes. This picture was probably taken at the Théâtre de la Gaîté-Montparnasse exhibition in Paris by Carl Van Vechten on June 16, 1934.

Until I saw this photograph, it never dawned on me that Man Ray might be Jewish (which he was), nor that he was American-born (I thought he was French, because he was most famous for the work he did while living in France), nor that he thought of himself as a painter (I knew him for his photography). 🤦‍♀️

For the record, the Young Dali sketch narrowly beat out this space captain from Friday, September 13. She is taking no shit, folks:

A pencil sketch of a space captain aiming her blaster off screen to the right. Leave her ship!

Sketch of the Week: self-portrait of a portrait of a tree (Sept 3, 2024)

My son suggested I share this one, which he characterizes as “handception” . The sketch I’m highlighting is the lower one, but it doesn’t make sense without the context of the larger page, so here you go:

A journal page showing the days Sept 2 and Sept 3. The Sept 2 sketch shows a tree beside a sidewalk. The Sept 3 sketch shows a hand holding the journal, the fingers curled alongside the portrait of the tree from Sept 2. Beneath the recursive version of Sept 2 in the sketch there is a sketched version of Sept 3, showing a hand holding a journal, the fingers curled around the page next to a portrait of a tree…you get the idea.