Self portrait in acrylics
Ages ago I tried my first self-portrait, but while re-doing my bedroom and creating a bit of a black and white gallery wall, I wanted to add another in there. Now… my housemate is the artist in our household (and doesn’t do portraits…) so I’m not pretending that this is some masterwork. BUT… I like it, it was fun, and I wanted to show it off.
I knew I wanted it to fit into a specific frame… which I know is not a super artistic choice, but whatever. I didn’t have a canvas that size, so I took a canvas board and cut it down. I know… weird.
I started with a filtered selfie I took a few weeks earlier, and then printed that out and made up the sketch onto the canvas. My eraser kind of ran out, and I was literally doing this while on the phone with my boyfriend, so the eye isn’t great, but I corrected that before actually painting!
starting sketch for my self-portrait
A few days later I pulled out all of my (artist, not craft) acrylics, and used zinc white for the base (yes, I know it’s not flesh coloured… I was going for a black and white painting for the most part) and then bone black, payne’s grey, and more white to build the background (hair, clothing), face, shadows, etc. I added in red, black, and a bit of interference red for the lips, and blue, white, and interference blue for the eyes.
Just dropping in the blacks and greys for my self-portrait
My housemate came in near the end to help me out with the shadows a bit, since she is WAY more experienced working with acrylics than I am.
Pretty close to being done with my self-portrait
Once it dried I used a spray on it to seal it, and popped it into the frame. Now just to get that frame up onto my slowly growing gallery wall!
Do you think I should have left the eyes and lips black and white? Let me know in the comments below!
Finished self-portrait in my beautiful painted frame!
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