It’s been quite a while since I really had time for a painting or really felt like painting… I have been working on a landscape painting here and there, but it’s mostly been sitting in the closet for months. I was looking around my computer for photos and saw some old reference ones I took of myself, so I took several more, playing around quite a bit with lighting. After I took a lot, I copied them to my computer and this painting is based off the very last photo. There’s a little bit of the painting that is cut off due to the camera and easel. I saved as much as I could with Photoshop’s camera distortion filter, but the colors are a bit off. The face is a bit more gray than the body, but nowhere near what it looks like in this image. The body color is (in person) much more vivid and warm.
I downplayed my tattoos by avoiding actual color (they are actually red text with black outlining) and using a pretty neutral brown. I also made them a bit smaller than in real life. The face isn’t very good. I had a lot of trouble with it, but I’m learning and slowly improving. At least it has an expression (that doesn’t match the reference photo, but oh well!). The painting also wraps around the edges of the canvas, so I couldn’t really capture that with the camera.
Overall, I am very pleased with the painting, even though the original photo is so much cooler and the painting obviously isn’t perfect. If you compare it to my first oil painting that I did about a year ago, you can certainly see a huge improvement (especially for having no guidance and only having painted a few paintings in that time). I might put the photo on here, but I haven’t decided. The title refers to the fact that I didn’t quite get it just right (you can semi-tell that it is supposed to be me), but the body is as true to life as I could get with my current skill level.
Ian,
This strikes me as a “not-modern” painting, as something that a caveman painter might have painted if he had modern materials with which to work, as a way a visual storyteller might have depicted the Trojan War.
It certainly shows hints of all the talent you have and I have no doubt that you can become whatever sort of painter you want to be.
Robert
Hmm, that’s a very interesting observation, Robert; it does have an almost primordial quality to it. Thank you for your kind comments.