Thursday, December 31, 2009

Another Self-Portrait Exercise

Self Portrait #2, 8 x 6

Here's another stab at the exercise I did for my last post. Considerably less than perfect, these two portrait studies have brought home to me a couple things. One, resist the urge to go to a smaller brush — even in most detail areas, like the eyes— than you would use for the rest of the painting. Two, getting an accurate value study in a portrait is more than enough to keep me occupied for ninety minutes. In fact, today's exercise actually took a little over two hours. The extra time was spent trying to fix problems I created with that little #2 brush(!).

So, because these last two studies both have areas where the values and/or placement are off, my next "ninety-minute" exercise will be done in one color only.

PLEASE, GOD, let ninety minutes be long enough!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm lovin' these self portraits. I don't have the courage to do one yet. You really captured your good looks and intensity in a few strokes!

Dana Cooper said...

90 minutes...wow! This is really impressive. When I squint at it I get a sense of the light and form. Well done!

Mitzi Easley said...

I like all these!! Brushing up for an alla prima class?