{"id":1437,"date":"2017-03-11T18:35:34","date_gmt":"2017-03-11T18:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/?p=1437"},"modified":"2017-03-11T18:35:34","modified_gmt":"2017-03-11T18:35:34","slug":"self-portrait-63","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/2017\/03\/self-portrait-63\/","title":{"rendered":"Self Portrait at 63"},"content":{"rendered":"

Staring at Mirrors<\/span><\/h2>\n

I finished another self portrait today.<\/p>\n

\"Self<\/a>

Self portrait senior citizen pencil<\/p><\/div>\n

I will post in order, first to last, along with a few notes about my thinking.<\/p>\n

I started in pencil, made sure it was accurate, then sprayed it with fix. This pencil drawing was about 4 hours of work.\u00a0 I intentionally made the eyes oversized. Several months ago I watched a movie called “Big Eyes”. It was about an artist who became famous for her paintings of children<\/a> with huge eyes.\u00a0 I’ve always loved pencil drawing as a stand alone medium, so I was very nervous about the potential for disaster when I moved from pencil to paint. As expected, when I started in with the palette knife I immediately had a train wreck. That was a dark moment, but I scraped it off, then cleaned the remaining paint off with turpentine. I was surprised\u00a0 the turpentine didn’t get past the spray fix to the pencil. Good chemicals!<\/p>\n

\"self<\/a>

self portrait progressive 2<\/p><\/div>\n

I started in with oil washes, trying to keep the values correct while searching for the color scheme. This felt a lot like watercolor painting. I love the versatility of oil paints. They can be anything you want them to be. And they are soooo much cheaper than pastels. I do miss my pastels though. I have so many good memories of painting beautiful places with pastel. And quite a few of them sold too (about 60). I’ve only sold one oil.<\/p>\n

I continued on with the oils. Skin tones are very confusing to me. Shades of brown never look right, so I randomly grab colors to see if they ring true. Hue can be wrong, but if the value is correct…<\/p>\n

I could have called it done here…and maybe I should have? I was posting my progressives on instagram. It’s fun to see how many likes I get up there. It’s a good gauge<\/p>\n

\"self<\/a>

self portrait progressive 3<\/p><\/div>\n

of the quality of the work. Not that I’m obsessed about likes, or, for that matter, sales. I paint for the satisfaction of the moment. The hours I spend painting feel…gosh, it’s hard to put into words. Time seems to stop when I am painting. It’s as if I step off the train of life, with all it’s complications and detours, onto a platform where everything is right in the world. The birds are chirping, the sky is blue, I’m young again, and doing what I was born to do.<\/p>\n

And that feeling lasts until I realize I’ve screwed up the painting again…and have to wipe it off and repaint the nose. But that’s art. My climbing and painting friend Kristi asked if I could leave part of the pencil drawing showing through the oil. That got me thinking about the nature of art, and<\/p>\n

\"self<\/a>

self portrait done<\/p><\/div>\n

realism. What is a finished painting? And why not just use a camera if you want it totally real?<\/p>\n

I’ve been using $40 home depot light for 5 years, but the darn things are made so cheaply the switches and wiring break down. While I was teaching film making in 2013 I got to use professional lighting instruments in our TV studio. Last week, I happened to be running errands in Seattle and dropped by Glazers camera where I picked up a Lowel Tota light. They are the most inexpensive pro level continuous light on the market,<\/p>\n

\"Lowel<\/a>

Lowel Tota light<\/p><\/div>\n

and have held that title for 20 years. They are sooo much better than home depot work lights. I also have photography umbrella that mounts with the Tota light on a light stand. I learned a lot teaching video, and those skills cross over into painting. I do try to keep in mind that fact that Van Gogh never had electricity, much less iTunes, or Tota lights.<\/p>\n

\"Lighting<\/a>

Lighting set up for self portrait painting<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Staring at Mirrors I finished another self portrait today. I will post in order, first to last, along with a few notes about my thinking. I started in pencil, made sure it was accurate, then sprayed it with fix. This pencil drawing was about 4 hours of work.\u00a0 I intentionally made the eyes oversized. Several […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1434,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,8],"tags":[126,129,125,128,23,127],"class_list":["post-1437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-painting","tag-lowel-tota-light","tag-painting-in-mirror","tag-pencil-drawing","tag-portrait-lighting","tag-self-portrait","tag-studio-lighting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1437"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1440,"href":"https:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437\/revisions\/1440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websterart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}