Close-up
 

Just finished this self-portrait. It is oil on paper and is life-size. Dimensions are 16x20. I wanted to move away from high chiascura and capture a softer image with more muted shadows and tones. All in all I wanted something a little lighter and crisper which is sometimes difficult to achieve using oils (actually I think that this has more of a watercolor feel to it).

Very nice job Clive.

Clive,
I think you achieved your goal. The light is beautiful, your colors are very nice, and the background is just perfect.
It's a great self portrait.

Thank you Claudemir and Marina. Actually the title is a reference to Chuck Close - an artist I admire very strongly. I have always liked the directness and simplicity of his early portraits. Ideally this would have been 6' by 9', but alas limited wall space and my wife prevented me from using such a monumental scale. Unfortunately, one is always lumbered with self-portraits as nobody else wants them. Actually, I don't think I could have lived very long with a "monumental me," so a "mini-me" will have to suffice. :)

Clive, I like this very much. It gives me a very clear idea of what you are like, though I'm not sure I could describe it verbally. Your work always has such clean, crisp color and light.

Very nice, Clive,

As noted in another excellent portrait posted recently it is difficult turning the form with color only.

I like the quiet essence of the overall portrait, the style and concept denote a clear and straight-forward personality.

Clive, I was recently, while painting, chatting to one of my tutors about colour temperature: I was saying that, since shadows are very often warm, then I would try and introduce some cool colours in the lights to define the form better.
What he said ( I felt all my art book knowledge crumbling ) was that this does not always work, and that to have cools in a face might give it an ill look, and that sometimes warm and warmer is enough.
I think this is a very good example of such a choice of colours, and it depicts coherently a certain light situation.

Very interesting work
Ilaria

Llaria,

Yes I have a tendency to use warm colors, as Alex Tyng pointed out in another of my posts. In this particular portrait I tended to use magenta and sap green. I love using the latter, it is such a wonderful chameleon color that really takes on the light of the surrounding colors. It is also very translucent so that it never dominates, just produces an unpretentious shadow.

Clive, I don't have sap green, if I need a green in skin tones I would normally mix it from viridian or blue. I'll buy a tube of sap and give it a try, I am experimenting with different colours
Ilaria

How interesting about sap green. Although it is a staple in my palette, I almost always use it in landscapes, not portraits.