The quest to dust off the old painting skills continues. Another self-portrait I'm afraid; largely for the same reason I did the first one! This self-portrait is larger than life-size which is the first time I've ever approached a portrait in this way and it took a little while to correctly eyeball the proportions and relationships between the key elements while visually scaling them up on the painting surface. Things seemed to happen much faster this time around and there was more fluency and confidence in the mark making. The whole painting took less than half the time of the original, which is quite a step forward. In feel, it is looser and more 'airy' than the first portrait and the subtle change in lighting tended to soften out details, presumably because of the more diffuse quality of the light.
In case you're wondering why I've got one eye closed, it's because as I've got older my right eye has become a bit lazy and it's sometimes difficult to maintain a single image view when I'm looking intently under these sorts of circumstances. To make things easier I simply close one eye while I'm actually looking at the subject while painting and drawing.
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This is really good. It draws you in, I like the way the portrait is slightly to the side, just enough to capture a personality and wonder why one eye is closed ( I read that bit about why but it still makes you think!)
Fabulous use of colour and tone.
I apologise, I don't know anything about art but I like it and it's so good to see something that isn't a photograph.
Gillian
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Thank you very much for your comments, Gillian, it's really encouraging.
The reality is that I nearly always draw and paint with one eye closed - I find it easier that way, so I just thought it would be interesting to actually create a picture doing just that. It was good fun to do.