Self portrait

I completely forgot about this piece. It was done a good few weeks ago to relax and to practice. When I was in school I absolutely adored drawing people's portraits, and I haven't done one since (which is...going on 8 years ago now!!!!!!). I thought it would be a good idea to do a self portrait, as I'd probably need one for when I eventually set up my own online portfolio, and I absolutely hate pictures of myself.

Surprisingly I did this one quite quickly, in about 4 hours or so. I used photo reference, and cranked up the brightness and contrast to simplify the shapes so that it was quicker to paint.



This one was also a really good practice for blending tones with a sharp contrast (i.e. white to black), and I really enjoyed it.

:EDIT: I found one of the WIP's for this piece, just to give an idea of how it was painted.



I pretty much went from right to left, which is quite unusual for me. I recall colour picking for this, purely because I didn't want to spend ages on it, as at the time it was close to assessments.