Self Portrait- Painting Write Up

Before starting my painting when I looked at pictures of certain artists I wasn't as inspired as I thought I would be. It wasn't until I had troubles deciding what to do with my painting, that these artists actually did something for me. I ran into the most problems with my collared shirt, although it did not seem like a tough task, it took me many times and different artsits to insipire different ways to potray the shirt. Three artists in particular helped me throughout my painting. These artists were Arthur Shilling, Lucien Freud, and David Hockney. I liked David Hockney because of the mixture of realistic and almost amatuer feautures drawn in his paintings. David Hockney was one of these Artists that helped me with my shirt, showing me that you can have a very detailed face, such as mine, and a less detailed, and almost amatuerly painted shirt. He showed me that paintings don't always have to be like the exact thing. Here one of David Hockney's painitngs that shows an example of this. This picture shows a detailed body, with very simple lines to define the water.

   The next artist, Lucien Freud helped me with my face. He adds layers and layers of paint to create contours on his face which gives a very cool effect. I used this effect under my eye and at the top of my chin, where the paint actually creates a mound becuase there is so much built up. this works fantastically, instead of just painting in a dark shadow you can acutally create contours in the face by using large amounts of paint. I found it most effective for dark shadows, such as the bags under my eyes. Here is one of Freuds paintings that I found to inspire me.

The last artist that inspired me was Arthur Shilling. He really helped me with my collared shirt. He uses alot of black line to outline features of his face, and body to pop them out, and bring them to life. For my painting I did not want to use black, so i used white to outline my collared shirt. It really popped out my shoulder, and made greater contrast with my dark foreground. He helped me with the simple lines that I added to my shirt, instead of using lots of thin complicated lines. I also used this technique with my forehead. I used a dark blue  to pop out the top of my forehead. Again what it did was pop out my forehead, while creating a noticable contrast between the the line and the highlights that were on my forehead. Here is a picture of one of Arthur Shillings photos that inspired me. This painting is a self portrait of David Hockney, and was not as inspiring as one I found in his book the Ojibway Dream, but it gives off the same idea.

    At the start of my painting process, I wasn’t to sure what feeling I wanted to possess in my painting. My picture showed lots of joy, and excitement, so I felt that the best way of getting this across was by using lighter colours. Colour, one of the principles of design, was one of the main things that I focused on through my painting process. I found mixing the colours lots of fun, but hard to replicate certain colours. The skin tones that I mixed, and chose were very light. Of course the lighter values would evoke a feeling of happiness and joy, and the darker colours would be used for darker paintings evoking feelings of sadness. I used lots of oranges as I went along in my painting. These oranges were used by mixing a lot of yellow and a bit of red. With my skin tones I felt by adding white it created a perfect skin tone, while keeping the orange tint. I used blues and purples for parts that were not meant to express a feeling, such as my neck or the front right foreground of my painting. I used these colours strictly for contrast that ended up being very successful in making my face and shoulder pop out. These darker colours although very effective, were not as useful as these lighter colours.

   At the start of the painting although I knew what I wanted to express it was hard to actually articulate my feelings on the canvas. An example of this is my lips. In my picture my lips are grinning, but at the start of my painting process it looked like I was covering my teeth, and did not look happy. I found out instead of working on lips, working on the values, and building up lighter colours around the lips helped define them. So by blocking in values around the lips it worked out better than working on the lips alone. I felt that shape played a huge role in my painting and helping to define what emotion I was trying to portray. I started of my painting with very vague shapes, and lines, that expressed no feelings at all. I worked very hard on just creating the right proportions. I noticed that my nostrils looked like they were being flared, and my eyes were very high up on my forehead, and once I changed these features it made my piece a lot softer, and calmer. It wasn’t as intense because there wasn’t a flaring nostril, and the proportions were correct. The proportions really helped pull my whole piece together. Simple things such as defining my ear with a bit of white helped it pop out and define my jaw line. The smile was created by the shape of my jaw. My jaw line I felt was a key part of my painting that helped the shape by using a lot of dark values. Overall as I progressed, the shape and form of my painting, made it seem more realistic, and really helped me get across certain emotions, such as softness, and happiness.

    Certain elements of design, such as line, and value played huge roles in my painting. Throughout my painting, I used lots of different techniques that I was taught in class. I used the dry brush technique, which was having a colour on my brush but stroking it across the wooden canvas to paint a part of my painting but still let the colours I was painting over, show through. This I found was a very effective technique. I felt that this dry brush technique was very useful, but for the most part used a lot of wet on wet. This got to the point where sometimes I would not even mix colours on my palette but mix them on the actual painting. The great thing with acrylic was that if this did not work out I could always go over with a new colour. This gave me a lot of freedom to experiment with these techniques. In terms of value I focused, and used a lot of contrast. I the contrast in my painting helped pop things out, give them life, and emphasize certain features. It helped portray the feelings that i was trying to get across, such as happiness. Contrast did this because it showed the light (happy) values in my face and contrasted them against the dark harsh colours in my neck. I used this in my collared shirt, to help create the difference between the inside and the outside of my shirt. Overall these elements of design really helped my paintings overall emotion, and helped emphasize certain features of my face.

    In my painting, my background was something that I wished I had thought about more at the start of the process. I started off with a light, very soft background, which consisted of yellows and reds. I did this because I didn't want to draw a lot of attention to it. I used a light blue fore my middle ground. I used thick brushstrokes going back and forth in a horizontal motion. I used this blue because I wanted to create a blue sky. I wanted it to seem like I was looking off into the distance of a nice blue sky. I used negative space on the right to create this feeling that i was looking into the distance. In the foreground I used a lot of experimentation. I started off with a dark green. This colour was just filled in without thinking about what it would do. I felt that this wasn't the right choice, but when I looked at the difference in the pictures I noticed that the contrast between the blue sky and the blue shirt was very weak. The contrast between the dark, rich green complemented the shirt, and popped it out. Near the end of my painting I had free time and felt I should experiment with matte medium. I used this throughout my whole piece, but didn't notice it as much in my face, as my background, and foreground. I used this matte medium with thick, vertical brush strokes. Since I added the green foreground in after the matte medium was added, it gave the foreground a feeling of movement. The horizontal brush strokes of the foreground and the vertical brush strokes of the matte medium complemented each other greatly. When I moved from the green in the foreground, to the blue in the middle ground, I almost blended the two colours. I did this by using the dry brush technique. By using the dry brush technique with the matte medium, it looks almost like blades of grass, which turned out to be a very effective addition to my painting. Also in my foreground, below my shirt I felt by leaving some of the wood untouched it would give a very effective use of negative space. In the end I appreciated my decision, because it created great perspective. Overall I was very happy with the way my foreground, middle ground and background turned out.

Self Assessment


    When I think back to the first class that we started these paintings, i have come a long way. I felt that it expressed the feelings that I was trying to convey. The painting didn't only express feeling of the picture I was painting off of, but gave off feeling of my personality. It gave of joyous and vibrant feelings, which are traits I feel express my personality. For this painting my medium of choice was acrylic paint. It gave me tons of freedom to take risks and try out new things, such as the tape on my shirt. I could do this because if I made a mistake it could be easily fixed by just painting over with another colour. I noticed many positive things about my painting. One of the things that I noticed was major contrasts that I created between light and dark values, which really popped out certain features, and created balance throughout the painting. The second positive thing I have to say about my painting is the colour, and how I was able to mix many extraordinary skin tones. I loved how my brush strokes were not all in the same direction, and created a lot of movement throughout my painting.

Self Portrait Painting

This is from the first class of work. As you can see there are very rough paint strokes, and all that I was working on were the proportions of the face, and filling in a backround colour. I choose a mixture of blue and white for my backround, that created great contrast with the orange tints that I later added to my face.

These two pictures were taken after the second class of painting. The one of the left is taken in the P setting on the camera which brough out the oranges in my photo, which i felt were a more realistic view of my picture in real life. The picture on the right was taken using the automatic setting which brings out the darker values, and more browns than oranges. As you can see lots of progress was made between the first and the second class. I started to work on more of a realistic skin tone, and started to really define the jaw line. I started a rough paint of my shirt.

In this photo I have made tremendous amounts of progress from the last photos. Once I got into the feeling of working with the paints i started to work faster, and probaly didn't take enough pictures in this time period, beucase there is such a drastic change. I started to make things more realistic. For this class i worked stricktly on the face, and perfecting the proportions, and starting with highllights. I fixed my nose, by making the nostril less noticable, and adding in some shading. I moved my eye down to make my forehead bigger. I defined the ear with a white tint which really helped my whole painting in terms of form. I added in the highlights in my cheek, forehead, and the top of the chin, making them really pop out. I brought my hair down over my ear, which was something that i had noticed to do, according to the photo of me. Overall lots of great steps taken.

These two pictures like the two above, are taken with the two different settings (P and Automatic). In this class i focused on blocking in the shading in and around the eye, and creating darker values in my hair. Overall not alot of change was made in this class, but i worked on very little things such as the ear, and making the highlights in myforehead visible but less intense. These things are hard to spot between the above photo and the two below.

Starting this class i felt that the proportions in my face were great, and everything was looking good, and i did not want to overwork my painting so i decided to start to work on my shirt, that ended up taking alot more work that i imagined. The shirt that i was trying to replicate had waffle stripes, or checkers. I felt that using thin strips of tape, that went in the ontours of the shirt and painting over them. And then i would peel these strips off. These strips took a whole class to cut up,place, and take off, and in the end i was not satifsied. I felt that the strips stood out to much. Overall my experimentation was a faluire and i wasted a whole class.

In the last remaining classes i worked extremely hard on refining my shirt. The picture on the left is the outcome of the tape, with a blue water colour layed over. I thought that maybe a straight blue would be the easiest and look great. This is of course the middle picture. When I looked between these two picture i noticed that the white line on my shoulder(from the picture on the left) creatred great contrast and popped out the shoulder. I felt i needed to step away from my painting and look at some art books. I found one that showed really defined black lines to pop out the face, and shirt, andi felt that i could use this strategy with my shirt. This is why I decided to make really defined stripesd lines in my shirt. I also used this defined line strategy on the top of my forehead with a blue colour, and on the bottom of my chin.

This is the final product, and the real only change is that dark purple that defined, and created the difference between the inside and the outside of my shirt.

This is the picture that i worked off of.

This is a picture of my face zomed in. You can really see the definition of my cheek, the dark values that surroundthe eye, that work their way down the side of my nose, and the definition of my chin.

This is a picture of myself working on a picture of myself