From the Artist: I had such fun with my first attempt, I wanted to try a more realistic approach without being realistic! Using expressive colors without worrying too much about the 'exactness' of features is liberating. What fun!
From the Painting Guide: Delighted to hear you've been having fun! Not focusing on getting a likeness frees you up to focus on the other aspects of portraiture, such as the way you're applying the paint, the meaning color can convey. Then, later on if you do further versions that you want to have more of likeness, they'll benefit from what you've learned doing the more expressive self-portraits.
I think your enjoyment of this is evident in this painting. To me it's portrait that conveys a sense of personality -- the little upturn on the mouth in particular and the strong shadows under the eyes. (Though part of me also sees the skin tones around the mouth as evidence of a much enjoyed peanut-butter sandwich.)
Things to Consider When Looking at This Painting:
Background: Notice how half the background is "busy" and the other half "quiet", how half is in a very dark tone and the other mid and light tones. I find the busy section distracts my eye from the face but do like the echoing of the colors. I also find the dark part of the background a bit of a visual black hole that pulls my eye in too strongly.
The strong red of the shirt risks being too strong and pulling the eye away from the face, but I like it. It picks up colors from the face and while it's visually interesting, it's not overwhelmingly busy. To some extent I find it counteracts the busyness of the background. Overall, I'd be tempted to glaze over the busy part to knock it back a bit (darken the tone) and lighten the other half; the aim would be to give the face more prominence.
From the Painting Guide: Delighted to hear you've been having fun! Not focusing on getting a likeness frees you up to focus on the other aspects of portraiture, such as the way you're applying the paint, the meaning color can convey. Then, later on if you do further versions that you want to have more of likeness, they'll benefit from what you've learned doing the more expressive self-portraits.
I think your enjoyment of this is evident in this painting. To me it's portrait that conveys a sense of personality -- the little upturn on the mouth in particular and the strong shadows under the eyes. (Though part of me also sees the skin tones around the mouth as evidence of a much enjoyed peanut-butter sandwich.)
Things to Consider When Looking at This Painting:
Background: Notice how half the background is "busy" and the other half "quiet", how half is in a very dark tone and the other mid and light tones. I find the busy section distracts my eye from the face but do like the echoing of the colors. I also find the dark part of the background a bit of a visual black hole that pulls my eye in too strongly.
The strong red of the shirt risks being too strong and pulling the eye away from the face, but I like it. It picks up colors from the face and while it's visually interesting, it's not overwhelmingly busy. To some extent I find it counteracts the busyness of the background. Overall, I'd be tempted to glaze over the busy part to knock it back a bit (darken the tone) and lighten the other half; the aim would be to give the face more prominence.