Self Portrait in Oil...the process...and the comparison

 In the studio with all my references...the acrylic me is on the bottom left, and the photo references are above...

This was a toughy for me!  Number one, I'd rather paint just about anything but ME...It forces one to really look hard...plus I have a hard time getting a likeness...I think subconsciously I eliminate those flaws that are ME...BUT, I told my students that I would walk them through the process I used to get to a completed portrait.  I decided to use the reference I used when I painted the acrylic version of ME the day I painted with the most wonderful portrait artist Carol Nelson (among many other painterly talents!).  I also want to show my students the difference in the end results when working with acrylic vs. oil for portraits.  SO...I decided to post the process and end result that I came up with...I realize things I COULD do to tweak this...but quite frankly I was sick of looking at me! HA...Here goes...

 Tinted the background with the reference drawing underneath.  I used pink as I was going for complete fauve...and there was a lot of pink in my acrylic version...

Beginning by adding line to areas I wanted to make sure were defined clearly...SPOOKY stage!!

Beginning to block in color and shadow...I thought about the purple shadow areas...looking like bruises...but I powered through KNOWING I didn't want a dull shadow...

Moving on to detail in some areas...playing with background color to make sure I was going to like it with the hair...getting those eyes and lips as close as I could...

Nearly there...I decided my lips were too red...could have left it like this...but played just a tiny bit more...and ended up with the finished version...

For better or worse this is what I ended up with...It is very hard to find that finished feeling when I do a self portrait...Having just painted all my flaws, and probably leaving out some very important descriptive details I decided to call this one a day...The reference and the acrylic version is below.

Reference...the one before I added the darks and lights...

Acrylic me...

WHEW...glad that is over...I almost posted this in my last post...but then Carol came up with a gorgeous me...and I just couldn't put the two together...As I've said I'm NO PORTRAIT PAINTER...but I won't let that get me down...I'm gonna master this eventually!!  The most important part...IT WAS A LEARNING EXPERIENCE!!

Now, on to another fun thing...We have our first entry to the painting challenge for this month...This entry is from Sherry Massey...You all know her as Autumn Leaves...Great job on the giraffe miss Autumn Leaves!!

Sherry Massey

Sherry's name will go into the drawing along with any other followers that submit an entry to me at my e-mail...art4life44@hotmail.com.