This concludes my year-long biweekly studio blog. Thanks for your positive response to the details of my portrait process, inspiration and career achievements. If you are landing on this page for the first time, I invite you to browse the posts below to learn about my lifelong passion for portraiture.
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Self Portrait in Clay
Although my efforts are still exploratory, I am passionate about sculpture and was thrilled to audit such a class in graduate school. Early in my painting career I didn't have frequent access to a live model. As a solution, I sculpted small heads from my own likeness and used them as reference for my figurative paintings. Some years ago I sculpted this clay self portrait from life while looking in several mirrors. Because the head measures just 2.25" in height, I chose to simplify form and detail. If I were to continue with the figure, I'd further build up the clavicle and other anatomical landmarks. Sculpting has made me a better painter with a heightened awareness of form and modeling in my 2-D work.
Self Portrait Study
Painted from life a few years ago, this self portrait was completed in oil on a 5 x 7 1/4” linen panel. I wanted to focus solely on the light/dark pattern and chose to paint in an open grisaille (griz-EYE). Grisaille originates from the French word gris, or gray. An open grisaille is a painting method that uses semi-transparent gray or neutral tones to establish initial shapes of light and dark (Painting in a closed grisaille carries forward with the addition of white paint to achieve an opaque, full tonal value range using monochromatic tones). Here, using a single paint value, I sought to capture accurate shapes of the light/dark pattern to achieve proper drawing proportion and likeness.