Self-portrait

I was interviewed by Are Heiseldal in Skaerbaek Fan Weekend last September (footage can be found here and here). In the interview Are asked me if I had ever built myself. I hadn't. I had though about it. I've made some self-portraits; on the first year's architectural studies we made "psychological self-portait"; I used coal. Last summer I painted another one with oil paints Pinja gave me as a birthday present. But a brick version, why not. The previous two-dimensional ones had been busts mostly, but this time I wanted to make a full version in the usual scale. I could make myself meet some of my character builds, for example.

The attire portrayed here is my usual winter gear. As this build was made in November, I was still looking for wearing it during the following months, but tough luck: It was the lousiest winter of my lifetime. Barely any minus degrees (celcius) and barely ano snow, neither. And I like my winter clothes! The boots were bought by my grandfather in Oulu, they're most likely Finnish made, and no idea how many decades old. The coat is made by Finnish suit factory and was found with some Finnish marks (old currency before joining Euro in 2001), so it's several decades old too. The hat, I believe, is my sister's partner's old one, origins unknown. Gloves are some usual supermarket type and the head is, of course, me.

As usually I began with the head, capturing my light-coloured beard, rosy cheeks and eyeglasses; bucket handle is used as my moustache and eyebrows are darker than my facial hair. My glasses do actually have metallic frames, but detail so thin gets quite impossible, so 1x1 tiles in trans-clear are used. I'm very happy with the shape of the hat; it's rather true to the original. I like wearing the rim turned upwards, with the earflaps flapping up and down as I walk.

The coat uses lot of dark blue, and I had to resort to blocky yet classic use of minfig leg elbows. The collar, a very definite part of the coat, is built with 2x2 triangular tiles and 1x4 swivel hinge plates. I'm happy with how I captured the subtle shape of the coat bulging a little under and above the belt.

Reddish brown boots have nice colour contrast with the dark blue coat, as with the real things. They're traditional "lapikas" type with up-curled toes. The shape is quite subtle, and I'm happy how it turned out, with the foot area being quite flat. These boots are fantastically airy.

-Eero

Some reference pictures from January 2021: