Self-Portrait

I am very excited about painting a self-portrait, that I have never done before. First I had my picture taken then I uploaded it on photoshop. By which, I stylized the picture by playing around with the brightness/contrast and the hue/ saturation. I ended up with a photo with different layers of blue and purple. After I printed the picture and I took a post-it and measured the width of one eye then I used that to measure the sixe of my face. Estimated to around six and a half eyes. On my canvas, I eye bald where I wanted my face to be located than I used the post-it to measure six and a half eyes up to show where the eyes,nose and mouth goes. Then I drew in the rest of the body and background.

I started first by shifting my face upward on the canvas. After, I had every piece of the drawing where I wanted it, I was ready to paint. The best way to paint a self-portrait is by painting one color at a time that way you can actually focus of the shade of the color to give more similarity between your picture and the painting. I started the painting focusing on my darkest color black. I mixed dark red, dark blue and a tiny bit of bright yellow paint. The mixture of the paint gave me a dark violet very close to black. Now I just have to paint so many coats.

I put a second coat of the black paint on the canvas. Which is actually dark blue, dark red and a tiny bit of yellow paint. After that looked like how I wanted, I started painting my right shoulder using basic light blue paint with a thick strand in the middle of my upper arm that was a darker blue to show the the shadow. I move my attention toward my face, because after I do the face if I decide to change something it would be easier to move the shoulders and/or background. I used the same mixture of paint that was for the black but instead I didnt put as much dark paint into it., to make a medium to dark purple for one of the shadows of purple  on my face.

I finished painting the face with four different shades of blue paint. After that I continued downward using the same paint and just mixing a little mineral spirits to expand my amount of paint. After the step of painting my self-portrait, I can really see the whole figuare.

I continued painting with the different shades of blue. I put some pieces of red and pink paint in spots so that they standout. The lighter part of my upper arm, I mixed a little bit of light blue paint with some whitepaint to go along with the other parts of my arms and clothing. The background was much simplier I mixed two different up two differerent shades of gray. Using some blue and orange paint. I really enjoyed painting my self-portrait it allowed me to be more creative than I have been.