Have you seen your face in the flesh?
If you came into my studio now, with seven self-portraits around and about, you’d have to wonder whether I was self-obsessed. Maybe I am, but that really isn’t the point of this exercise. As I was saying last week, I am a cheap artist model and this enables me to practice painting faces.
I spent two days at the end of last week working with Jac, building up the underpainting of two self-portraits. We started with an asphaltum and radiant green ground then went in to the darks with chrome black, mid tone grey and radiant blue for the lights. Then transparent wash in yellow ochre, opaque block in/scumble, then repeat again and slowly bringing some flesh tones . As always it was a steep learning curve. I think the key things that I have to keep reminding myself are:
- Never lose sight of the tonal variations and certainly don’t get hung up on fine detail in the early stages. Just block in broad areas creating tonal forms, it’s these and not the edges of each feature that create the dynamic of a painting.
- It’s a fine balance between thinking about where I am going without trying to get there too quickly. It’s the layer upon layer that gives the painting depth, not thinking, oh I have blue eyes where is my blue paint! The blue of the iris may be the hint of a glaze in the final layer.
- When I look at work by some of my favourite artists, their faces have relatively little flesh colour, being made up of greens, greys, yellows blacks blues, reds, oranges, warm, cool. Even if you’re not into painting next time you go to a museum take a closer look at the corners of the mouth or the shadows under the nose. Therefore it hard to say, what colour palette should I use to paint a face? The options are endless, it’s about experimentation.
- This is painting not drawing, I do not want to paint a line that defines the top of a lip or a strong wrinkle down the face. A wrinkle may be formed by a dark under paint with a lighter over paint coming in from its sides but leaving space for the dark to come through. A lip may just have the slightest glaze of red in the middle with no defined edge.
I don’t think my work truly demonstrates what I’m talking about yet but here would be examples in paintings by some of my favourite artists:
My self-portraits are in the earliest stages, the more fleshy on is further along but my latest is more confident and as Jac says has more movement.
A complete aside to the process of painting is the investigation of your own face. John Dalton is currently writing a book that he is sharing in his podcasts, https://www.johndalton.me/podcast/ep-130-audio-new-book/ in the first chapter talks about our face and the fact that we can never actually see it in the flesh. I had never put too much thought into this. Close one eye and you can see the end of your nose, stick your tongue out and up, if you’re lucky you can see that. Come to think of it over the years I have started to see the edges of my eyebrows in my peripheral vision as they begin to droop, they definitely weren’t visible in my 20s and 30s.
Mirrors tell lies, you have fat ones and thin ones, thin can usually be found in changing rooms in expensive clothes shops. We have photographs but who can say they have a photograph that is precisely to scale? The only faces you see in the flesh are other peoples but the only face you feel from the inside is your own.
By now I can hear you saying, ‘yep she’s definitely on drugs’ . All I’m trying to describe is the sensation of being behind your face whilst painting your face and looking in a mirror at your face. It’s a very confrontational experience. Not the kind of confrontation when someone would say… he/she is very ‘in-your-face’. But a more personal confrontation with self which can be very emotionally charged.