Self-portraits!
What an insightful practice!
Having completed the first self-portrait painted since high school, many interesting dialogues in my head have occurred. I mentioned previously that the process first started with capturing an image of myself that I liked.
As I painted, I found myself detaching from the image of "me" to depicting various features and colors. It seemed that I compartmentalized which we humans tend to do as a distraction mechanism to avoid reality.
Hummmmmmm.
As I continued to paint separate "entities" such as mouth, nose, or eyes my attention was focus solely there. I got lost in wrinkles and details. Due to this process, I feel that the watercolor portrait does not flow together and find myself liking only parts and not the whole. Interesting thought.....
I think I will continue the dialogue with another self-portrait. This one shall be freer and not have the "mug shot" feel.
I told a friend I would not post the self-portrait to my website as I did not particularly like it, but I will post it here out of curiosity for those of you interested in my process.
Back to the beach and rock watercolor painting to escape.....
