Self-portrait

[Dave McKnight]

So far I've held back on posting something for critique. There are so many great painters here it's intimidating. Of course, I shouldn't care about embarrassing myself since I'm here to take advice. I'll let my impulses get the better of me today and hopefully that will make it easier next time.

This is one a several self-portraits I've been working on lately. For this, I put the canvas and mirror side-by-side on the easel. Initially I used very little lighting but I discovered that it's bad to paint on a dimly lit canvas! When I added more light, things progressed a bit better. There are some problems that I'm aware of. The oversized right eye, the too-high right ear, the misaligned right hair line and a couple other things. The red in the digital image is stronger than it shows in life.

Anyway, let me know what I can improve on.

[Terri Ficenec]

Hi Dave--
This is a striking piece. . . intense, with interesting -but somewhat confusing- lighting. The face gives the impression of being drenched in sweat. I'm not sure if some of the light effects in the image are painted that way, or reflections on wet paint... ? There are some nice things (modeling and color) going on in the lower half of the face, though the forehead's not turning away as it approaches the top/hairline. It might be helpful to know how your lighting was set up. (Am I seeing light from both our lower left and upper right?)

Good for you for posting! and welcome

[Alexandra Tyng]

Hi Dave,

I'm so glad you posted this. The examples you posted when you joined left a permanent impression on my brain. This has a similar directness and intensity, but more so, I guess because it is a self-portrait and has that expression of concentration.

The lighting is unusual, and I like that. I agree with Terri that the modeling in the face and neck (from the eyes down) is convincing. But I think that there could be more modeling in the forehead, especially around the hairline. It does look slightly flat and the hair starts suddenly, without the blending of skin color and hair color that occurs at this transition.

The other thing that pops out at me is the straigtening of the upper features--eyes and eye sockets, ears, and hairline. That may be why you are having trouble with the one eye staring (is it too high?) and the ears. The lower part of the head seems slightly tilted, but the upper part seems to vascillate between tilting and trying to straighten out. Of course this may just be the way you are. Nobody is symmetrical. No insult to your appearance intended! Just something to check.

In general, it's extremely well-painted and a fascinating self-portrait. If you can get an image with more accurate color, I'd like to see it.

Alex

[Dave McKnight]

Terri and Alexandra, thanks so much for responding with such acute observations! I think that advice I'm going to get here is going to help me tremendously. I'm relieved that I haven't been chased out of here by a lynch mob.

I did not set out to paint a "sweaty" self-portrait although I don't mind that look since it helps show mass and I have sweat through some of this process. Some of these light areas are indeed highlights while other speckles are reflected from the wet paint.

Yes, the lighting is confusing, especially to me. When I first started on this, my setup was as follows. A couple feet over on my lower left is a shaded lamp that gives off a soft incandescent glow. To the right, four or five feet over, is a slightly cooler make-shift spotlight that is directed at the floor. Overall the lighting was quite dark. I worked this way for a few hours only to be dismayed when I saw what I painted under better lighting conditions - colours, values and edges were distorted and more choppy than I like.

So I turned on the ceiling light - a bulb that is directly above and behind me by about two feet. I never anticipated having to use this additional light but I realized it was necessary to paint in brighter lighting conditions - to me this requirement will become an axiom that I ought to write down and stick to my studio wall. It must be evident my initial mistake is in not planning this very well having cornered myself with an obscure environment (I repeat this mistake regularly with self-portraits).

From this brighter environment, the slight back-lighting introduced new challenges. Because my mirror/canvas is less than two feet away, I'm bobbing my head from side-to-side, up-and-down and forward and back to see my model and my canvas. This combined with fragile lighting conditions causes values to fluctuate, particularly on my forehead. That being said, it's no excuse for the problems there.

I have a tendency of focusing around eyes, nose and mouth, neglecting the more subtle parts around the face. I think the area where I'm weakest is with hair - in my case it's tough because the shape of my hair can change quite a bit between sessions. I'm very careful not to waste my time and energy laboring with unimportant things but there are important things that I'm not registering. Having this input is good motivation for me to pay more attention to these other parts. The moving around is what's messing up the feature alignment - depending on what I'm painting/looking at, the tilt of my head changes. I plan to correct those problems if I can do it without repainting the whole thing - I just need to decide what tilt I want to stick with. One of the last things I did was to reposition the right eye further to the right. In that session, I didn't have time to correct the details but I plan to fix it when I come back.

I'm encouraged by these responses and I will take what you've said with me when I return to this. I'll post an update when I think I've solved some of the problems.

Thanks!