Self Portrait (finished)

Finished that self portrait! I've done a new self portrait each year for a couple of years now, and you can see a huge difference between each one in terms of skill. It's weird because each year I think "this is it, I'm finally getting good at this whole art thing." but when I look back at it a year later it looks terrible. I wonder what I'll think of this a year from now.

Value Study

 

I'v read in about a million different sources that you should do a value study before diving into a painting with color. Historically, values tend to be my greatest weakness. I've spent 12 hours working on an image just to stand back and realize everything's a dark grey, aside from a puddle of white near the bottom that draws your attention away from the focus. Basically  I'm trying to get my shit together.

I'm super jazzed about how this is turning out so far. I'm toying with the idea of using it on a business card once it's done, even though my hair is going to grow out  a lot faster than I can hand out cards. I don't actually have a business, and I'd have to leave my apartment to hand out business cards (very unlikely), but I've been told that I should have them, and I do like the idea of having a bunch of wallet sized cards with my face and contact info on them. Maybe I could use them to hit on people?

Caricature in progress

I just started working on a digital caricature of myself. Final version will have super realistic textures and color, but the same exaggerated features as a caricature (which I'm super excited about). Exaggeration has always been my weakness as a caricature artist, so before diving into the final portrait I made a few different drawings with different exaggeration.

For the final painting I'm going to use the top sketch, but I sort of like all of them. Maybe I'll do a series of selfies.