Work in progress: Self-portrait

10/4: I tried to look at the light more closely and add more warm and cool notes. It got frustrating and I lost patience, probably wrecking some areas. I wish painting wasn't so hard.

Work in progress: Self-portrait

10/1: Self-portrait, oil on canvas panel, approx. 8x6 in.

Spent three hours to get to this point - now less like a Sculpey face and more like me. It has been tricky work in the eye areas, trying to see past the glare on my glasses. I would take them off if I weren't practically blind. The biggest correction from the first stage I think has been the shape of my nose, which I never feel I can get just right. From the side it is an obnoxious piece of landscape - even my teacher Jeff Markowsky couldn't get the profile right when I sat for him years ago. I think about that and smile, as it reminds me that even the people I look up to who are exceptionally good can sometimes get thrown off.

Work in progress: Self-portrait

9/30: Self-portrait, oil on canvas panel, approx. 8x6 in.

Lest this blog become just a series of tiny 20-minute sketches, I thought I’d better do something more involved. This time I wanted to do a more finished self-portrait. I can’t guarantee that it won’t end up an embarrassing mess, so here is what it looks like now. I think it is the beginning of a decent portrait, at least beginning to look like me – keeping in mind the fundamental structural concepts such as forming the sockets before eyeballs, I tried to address some crucial things before stopping: eyes going in the right direction (sounds simple enough), the corners of the mouth, and (in my case) looking like a member of the Taliban. Well, it’s on its way.

This is only an hour and a half of work so far and I tried to stay rough. The palette is typical for me nowadays: white, yellow, ochre, red, alizarin, transp. oxide red, burnt umber, cerulean, ultramarine, black. I should keep cad. red light off my palette and use it only in special cases (it’s not like I can't use the other colors to make everything way too hot); same with my old friend burnt sienna, as the oxide red pretty much replaces it. I might add terre verte or a similar green, if mainly as a way to remember to use greens more, but it still leaves the total number above 10, when painters like Nerdrum can work with 3 or 4.... I may well end up doing more of a dabby type of Nerdrumesque modeling here, thinking that I possibly relate to his style more than I thought. We'll see how it goes.

Self-portrait

Self-portrait, oil on canvas panel, approx. 6x4 in.

8/13. Throughout this process the mirror has become my best friend. I use one to see what I'm working on from a new perspective, in order to help correct basic mistakes in massing, lighting and drawing. It was while thinking about that that I decided to paint myself and leave aside the jam jar and knife I'd set up. I used to be able to crank out a fairly decent self-portrait between 1 and 3 am for next class, back in the day. I don't remember the last one I did recently.

This panel was another one I oil primed and, while I didn't let the paint get to me too badly, I worked on it longer than I meant to and it started to feel sticky and waxy, in the end making it feel like I was doing one of those funerary portraits from Roman Egypt. Except those are infinitely more elegant.