I still felt like painting this afternoon, so I decided to do a quick portrait study. And not with just any subject, no, I was going to paint myself! That’s a whole different kind of weird, I can tell you. I’ve never drawn or painted myself before, and I realize that I actually don’t know what I look like. In a mirror I look very different from how other people see me (my face is quite asymmetric), and seeing a picture of myself always makes me feel a bit uneasy.
I decided to limit the torture by painting on a postcard. Not too big, not too important. Haha. I quickly outlined my head with a pencil, and then I started painting. I wanted to see if I could paint a face without a real pencil sketch. It was a challenge. I messed up the eyes big time, then I used an eraser to get rid of a layer of paper there and tried again. Better, but still wonky.
I also tried to paint surfaces, not lines, and to use warm and cool colours to indicate areas with more or less light. It looks a bit as if I have a beard, because I went a bit too dark. I don’t have a beard in real life, just saying.
The mouth is quite nice, but not mine – it’s too big. The shape of the face is a bit too skinny (artistic freedom, haha!) – well, that was actually not on purpose, but I didn’t want to mess up the chin even more. The right (my left) eye leaked again after the fix and the other one did so too, but a bit less. As I said, wonky.
I sent a picture of the painting to my husband without telling him whom it was supposed to represent. He told me that my I had a nice hair day. At least I seem to be recognizable, something I cannot really judge myself. I’m very bad with faces, even my own. Really bad. I usually recognize people by their clothes, posture and voice first, and face second.
