I love doing these pencil self-portraits. I think of them as excercises in looking intently, or as little snacks in between proper meals. They’re something I do in between paintings or when I’m not sure what I should be doing. Pencil drawing is my comfort zone, I find it very soothing, and a self-portrait is interesting in the sense that the face is so familiar but how I see and portray myself is about much more than just a face and its proportions. They always turn out different, and I never know how they will turn out. Honesty is the most important parameter: at the end, if I see myself looking back from the paper, if the portrait retains a bit of my soul and tells something of the way I saw myself at the time of drawing, I feel like I have succeeded.