LifeBook Week 36: Mixed Media Portrait

I approached this week's LifeBook lesson with Annie Hamman from a purely technical point of view. Sometimes, that's all I need. It's not a self-portrait and there's no meaning behind it, other than I wanted to practice my face painting skills using some of Annie's methods. She does it so effortlessly! I cheated a little and used a pencil for outlining - that's  partly because I don't have very fine detail brushes to paint delicate lines.

I started out with a collaged background, leaving the face blank. At this point, my background looked scarily busy and I wasn't sure if I was going in the right direction. However, once I toned down the background with some raw umber, everything seemed to have fallen in place. Of course, it's not perfect, and I can see dozens of things I could have done better, but it will do for now.

One thing I'm aware of is that I don't have much patience to work on details. Also, once I reach a level where it looks "acceptable", I tend to just leave it in fear of messing it up, even though I know it could be further improved. Well, that's obviously something I need to work on in the future, but I'm quite happy with this piece as it turned out. Here's how it started:

And here's the finished piece:

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