From the Artist: Well, I think this is a better effort at an expressionist painting than my previous attempt! I don't know whether it looks like me, but it certainly feels like me and I'm really happy with it. The eyes are too big and goggly but that's okay, I wanted them to have impact.
Your suggestion of using bigger brushes helped me stop fiddling ,although I still did go back over and over to touch up things that were probably better left alone. The photo's taken close up but it looks better from a distance.
From the Painting Guide: I think this is great and you should indeed be pleased with yourself, and the leap you've taken from your previous self-portrait to this. It's got such a sense of an individual, really interesting skin tones, a great sense of from. Yes, the eyes are too big, but that also makes it expressive and I certainly couldn't try to "fix it". It could be read as symbolic for the intense way you study yourself when painting a self-portrait. I suspect your neck is also a little short.
You've set the bar high now and you may find the next self-portrait you do doesn't please you as much as you're trying too hard to achieve again what you've got here. But remember, every painting builds on the one before it, and this one isn't a fluke, it's a significant moment in your development as a painter.
Things to Consider When Looking at This Painting:
Composition: Having the hair and shoulders go off the edges of the canvas gives the face full dominance in the painting. The strong lines in the hair also push your eye into the facial features.
Skin Tones: When you look really closely, skin has variation in color in it. It's not one flat, uniform color that changes only where there's shadow. A this painting shows, it can work really well to emphasize this variation. It gives the viewer's eye something to look at, something that appeals visually, rather than something that takes only a glance to be read as "skin".
Your suggestion of using bigger brushes helped me stop fiddling ,although I still did go back over and over to touch up things that were probably better left alone. The photo's taken close up but it looks better from a distance.
From the Painting Guide: I think this is great and you should indeed be pleased with yourself, and the leap you've taken from your previous self-portrait to this. It's got such a sense of an individual, really interesting skin tones, a great sense of from. Yes, the eyes are too big, but that also makes it expressive and I certainly couldn't try to "fix it". It could be read as symbolic for the intense way you study yourself when painting a self-portrait. I suspect your neck is also a little short.
You've set the bar high now and you may find the next self-portrait you do doesn't please you as much as you're trying too hard to achieve again what you've got here. But remember, every painting builds on the one before it, and this one isn't a fluke, it's a significant moment in your development as a painter.
Things to Consider When Looking at This Painting:
Composition: Having the hair and shoulders go off the edges of the canvas gives the face full dominance in the painting. The strong lines in the hair also push your eye into the facial features.
Skin Tones: When you look really closely, skin has variation in color in it. It's not one flat, uniform color that changes only where there's shadow. A this painting shows, it can work really well to emphasize this variation. It gives the viewer's eye something to look at, something that appeals visually, rather than something that takes only a glance to be read as "skin".