Drawing Me, Drawing You

Who: with a sitter

With: several sheets of paper

This exercise, which uses a model as the basis for a self-portrait, can help unite two ways of image-making - observational and imaginative drawing - and can reveal how they support each other.

Draw the sitter's pose from observation, making sure to fir their whole body on the page rather than cropping the figure to drawing just, for example, the face. As you draw them, simultaneously incorporate everything you know and remember about how you look: your body size and shape, face shape, features, hair style, the clothes you are wearing today. try to integrate your own features right from the beginning, rather than sketching the model first and then superimposing yourself at the end. The idea is for the sitter's pose to supply the basic anatomical architecture, with your own features providing the specific details that will bring the character - you - to life.

To take this exercise further, create a mini-sequence by making two further drawings of your character standing up from their chair and then walking away. You could either draw from the model again, or from imagination.

If you enjoy this, your sequence can continue indefinitely - keep drawing your figure, now purely from imagination and memory, and see where 'you' might like to go next. Work intuitively to expand the sequence across multiple pages or frames. You could explore wish-fulfilment, fantasy, the darker sides of your character or the simple joy of mundane acts.

The exercise allows you to take ownership of an observed image, but also to become the author of your self-image and your own story. You become a character that comes to life on the page.

Tag us in your drawings on instagram @royaldrawingschool or Twitter @RoyalDrawing and use the hashtag #drawingfromhome so we can share your creations!

Emily Haworth-Booth is a comics artist who teaches courses on comics and graphic novels at the Royal Drawing School and has run workshops for adults and children at venues including the Hay Festival, Saatchi Gallery, St George's Hospital, Kentish Town City Farm, Momentum Project Newham and the National Art & Design Saturday Club at Kingston University. Emily won the Observer/Comica/Jonathan Cape Graphic Short Story Prize in 2013 and was runner-up of the same prize in 2008. She has also performed stand-up comedy at many London venues and was a finalist in the 2007 Nivea Funny Women Awards. Her comics have appeared in the Observer, Miss Vogue and on the Conversation website. 

Drawings from top: Emily Haworth-Booth, Liam Walker, Jessie Makinson