Sunday, June 21, 2009

Self Portraits

I was thinking of participating in David Lobenberg's Self Portrait Global Love In blog, so played around with a pastel and an acrylic painting this weekend. Hard enough taking a digital photo of yourself, but harder still to paint it correctly!

I like this one the best of the two (this is the one I took my own digital picture), but I don't think the painting looks like me. The eyes are too big and the nose too small. This one is pastels on suede mat board. This one is another story. I love the photo of me, but the acrylic painting is WAY off. YUCK. The drawing is not even close, and I had little luck controling the paint today. I used standard acrylic paints, not the Chroma brand today. Maybe that was the difference in my brushstrokes. This was a piece of golden color mat board primed with clear gesso as an experiment. One of my plein air friends uses clear gesso on colored mat board for his toned surfaces since they are lighter to carry than hardboard panels.

I'll probably play around this week more before I decide to send anything to David.

2 comments:

laura said...

The over-the-shoulder photos is a great one, but 3/4 views are harder to draw, I think.
The top self-portrait does look so much like you!
It's a curious endeavor--self-portrait. Doing one always makes me realize how unfamiliar I am with my own face!

Nancy Van Blaricom said...

Great project. I've done one self portrait and when I was done had no idea who that person was, *giggle. I agree with Laura, the first portrait looks pretty right on.