Navel gazing at it's finest. It is really weird to write a summary about yourself in the 3rd person.
The last time I painted a self portrait was about a year ago, in May 2020. It was, if you can believe it, the first self portrait I'd ever done. And here's my second, after a very solid year of painting mostly one other person.
It was interesting to note just how much I don't know my own face. You'd think it'd be more familiar, since I've inhabited it for the last 46 years, but nope. It turns out that the level of mindful observation necessary for a photorealistic painting is quite a lot higher than my usual day to day, a few seconds here and there, glimpses of myself in the mirror. There's a bit of gentle agony in making a self portrait for those of us who don't idealize faces; spending hours confronting those features that you wish weren't quite... like THAT, and still painting them faithfully. It's a good exercise in self acceptance!
(It has just occurred to me that, after painting so many portraits of him, I may just know the tiny details of Adam Driver's face better than he does, and... I'm not sure how I feel about that, actually. But mostly I just hope he doesn't mind.)
That really is my favorite sweatshirt. It's 3 sizes too big, and chances are just about 100% that I was wearing it at some point while painting every piece I've posted in the last 18 months. The lighting is courtesy of my desk lamp, and I really do work mostly in the dark at night, minus the light from my lamp, so this is a pretty accurate picture of me in my creative space.
Reference used was taken by yours truly.
Painted over the course of 9-10 hours while listening to the album "Lil' Beethoven" by Sparks on repeat (which![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hedgie_hoggle on Twitter perfectly described as "a deliberate act of artistic earworm terrorism [that is] brilliant on so many different levels"... She's right, I love it to bits, and if you love repetition and variations on a theme you should totally go listen to it. Go on, go!)
The last time I painted a self portrait was about a year ago, in May 2020. It was, if you can believe it, the first self portrait I'd ever done. And here's my second, after a very solid year of painting mostly one other person.
It was interesting to note just how much I don't know my own face. You'd think it'd be more familiar, since I've inhabited it for the last 46 years, but nope. It turns out that the level of mindful observation necessary for a photorealistic painting is quite a lot higher than my usual day to day, a few seconds here and there, glimpses of myself in the mirror. There's a bit of gentle agony in making a self portrait for those of us who don't idealize faces; spending hours confronting those features that you wish weren't quite... like THAT, and still painting them faithfully. It's a good exercise in self acceptance!
(It has just occurred to me that, after painting so many portraits of him, I may just know the tiny details of Adam Driver's face better than he does, and... I'm not sure how I feel about that, actually. But mostly I just hope he doesn't mind.)
That really is my favorite sweatshirt. It's 3 sizes too big, and chances are just about 100% that I was wearing it at some point while painting every piece I've posted in the last 18 months. The lighting is courtesy of my desk lamp, and I really do work mostly in the dark at night, minus the light from my lamp, so this is a pretty accurate picture of me in my creative space.
Reference used was taken by yours truly.
Painted over the course of 9-10 hours while listening to the album "Lil' Beethoven" by Sparks on repeat (which
hedgie_hoggle on Twitter perfectly described as "a deliberate act of artistic earworm terrorism [that is] brilliant on so many different levels"... She's right, I love it to bits, and if you love repetition and variations on a theme you should totally go listen to it. Go on, go!)
