Self portrait study

For the summer I had to produce a painted portrait of myself; this piece would say something about me as a person, and would emulate the style of a chosen artist. During my visit to the National Portrait Gallery, I found an interesting piece by Robert Bevan. His cold, unusual colour palette intrigued me, as did his use of dramatic outlines on his facial features. I created several colour studies before I decided that a blue toned study was one I wanted to pursue. It was my favourite among the four studies in terms of colour; the blue hues in the foreground complimented the background while at the same time the pinks and yellows of the face created a sharp contrast.

I felt the piece lacked another dramatic element, therefore I decided to wear a vivid red T-shirt. This introduced another contrasting element to the piece which contributed to the visually dynamic composition I wanted to achieve. I also decided to make the facial tones slightly colder than my original blue colour study, to emulate Robert Bevan's piece more. The blue glow on the half of my face was tuned to a bruised purple hue which stands out more prominently against the plain blue background, and creates a mid tone between the blue background and the red T-shirt. The reasoning behind the blue-purple lighting is an expression of inner conflict: a conflict of gender identity- the blue light stereotypically representing the masculine side of myself, and the red T-shirt acting as a gender-neutral hue suggesting conflict.

My process: Firstly I carefully measured the proportions of my face and drew a faint line sketch of the entire composition. I then mixed the desired blue for the background and painted around the sketch of my head and bust. I then painted the hair and T-shirt in order to have other colours to compare the face tones to; if I wanted I could paint over the edges of these elements again if the face skin tones overlapped onto them. I then painted a basic overall palette for the facial tones, and from there I simply added subtler colours until the skin became even and naturalistic. I then added finer detailing into the hair, eyes, shirt etc. Lastly I added the outlines to the darkest areas of the subject to emulate Bevan's style.

I used Daler Rowney Original Acrylics on canvas.