Portraiting

Inspired by the call for submissions for a portrait exhibition, I turned my attention to the human form.

I used myself as the subject matter, because I am always available for me to paint.

My original intention was to approach the portrait in the same way that I first approached painting flowers- starting with large patches for blobbed or squeezed on pigment, layering these areas of colour and then going into the detail. The intention at the start was not necessarily to paint a face that is recognisable as my own.

Through the process of painting the human face, I have become aware of how eager i was to depict something recognisable. To try to paint as true to life as possible.

I do not think that this exercise is complete and I am excite to try different techniques to depict my face.

A few observations:

when looking at the photographed images of these paintings, it provides a degree of objective distance, where the structural flaws of the paintings are evident.

For most of the paintings my resources was a mirror, and these paintings have a very different quality from the painting where the resource was a photograph.

In the process, I found my self wanting to paint like an artist friend of mine, who paints the most amazing portraits.