Noonie's |Self Portrait| Part I



I'm sure I've mentioned it before but I'm a huge fan of Van Gogh's work, especially his self portraits. I have painted one self portrait in the past as an assignment for a painting class I took. But recently I was inspired to attempt another self portrait as I had been looking at a few of Van Gogh's self portrait paintings + I started thinking about how he must have modeled for these paintings, by way looking at himself in a mirror. Just the thought of Van Gogh sitting there looking at his reflection + painting it got my inspiration juices flowing + so I decided I needed to paint myself a self portrait (pun intended).

I took a somewhat different route than Van Gogh did by skipping the mirror + snapping a quick photo of myself (Random Note: Notice how I didn't use the word "selfie"?! I despise the word!)  to use as a guideline for my painting. After I had a photo to use I started in on the painting. I worked on this painting for about a week + then it was left sitting + had been sitting as is for a few months. Not that I didn't do any painting for a months I just ran out of fuel to continue working on this particular piece, that was up until a few weeks ago.

I'm not sure what got me inspired to work on this piece once again, but I guess it falls in the "wonders of being an artist" category. After doing some touch ups to the face I decided I wanted to focus some more energy into the tunic part of the painting. I wanted to keep this painting somewhat "flat" looking so I didn't want to go too crazy with the tunic as I didn't want it to stand out or overpower the piece, I did however want to add a little somethin' somethin' to it. This got me thinking about what sort of design or texture to add to the tunic + the answer turned to lye within an lace table cloth + a can of blue spray paint. Yes you read that right. I knew I wanted the tunic design to be blue so I painted the tunic white, then I taped off the rest of the piece other than the tunic, laid down the lacy tablecloth + spray painted the design of the tablecloth onto the white tunic. I'm not sure where the idea of using the lace table cloth + spray paint came from but I'm very happy with the results! Definitely will be using this newly found technique again soon! :)

             

    Painting + Prepping the Tunic

In Action!

When I had left this painting unfinished + sitting for a few months the background I had painted on it was solid black. However when I came back to finish this piece I decided the black had to go. It definitely gave the piece a "stark" look which I did like, but I just felt like it needed a little somethin' somethin' just like the tunic. And so I got to work on the background adding textured black + greens. As the case was with the tunic I didn't want the background to overpower the subject of the piece which is why I had to decided to just do a textured background with a few colors. However unlike the tunic I'm not happy with how the background turned out. And so the journey continues on with this painting. After the failed background attempt I haven't messed with this painting again yet, but be on the look out for more to come with this bad boy! I definitely still have my work cut out with this one!

Until next time friends...Cheers!!!

<3 Noonie

P.S. Whadya think of this painting so far? Any suggestions as to what direction I should take with the background? I'd love to hear from ya! Comment below! :)