I have already done the underpainting for my self-portrait, based on the photo I took yesterday. I use a 40% linseed oil/60% mineral spirits mix and I mix that with burnt umber. I have done the basic line drawing and I will take the same paint mix now and start painting in the shadows on the skin – this will give volume to the figure.
I’m prepping new business cards and I want to paint a self portrait for the card. I had Matt take a few pics this morning and this is the one I’m going with. Matt thought I looked inquisitive, yet confident, and that sounds good to me.
Photographing my own work is one of the most difficult tasks! Often the photos look dull and grey in comparison to the actual painting because they are photographed in the shade. When I put the work in the sun for the photo it has too much shine and that doesn’t work either. So, I have to run all my images for the website or Facebook through Photoshop first. The image on the left is the raw one and on the right, the cleaned up one. I crop the image, resize it, and often I have to play with the contrast and brightness to make it resemble the original, but it never looks as good.
Welcome Everyone! I’ve been working on an artist Facebook page (blog) for about a year now, and that has been quite successful. I have about a hundred followers there who are very supportive! I believe that Facebook owns my content so I have decided to run this blog on my website and the Facebook one simultaneously, so that I may have the rights to my own work. Who knows – maybe someone will want to pay me for it one day!
