I sincerely hope that someone looks at this self-portrait and thinks - shouts - "I could do better than that." You probably can and you will only ever know if you try.
Come paint with me. I will show you how I did this one.
It started as an attempt to print out a selfie I had taken with my phone. Everything went wrong, it printed on plain paper instead of photo paper, and a couple of ink cartridges had dried up or gone empty, so the print was washed out, more of an outline than a photo. The essential elements of shape.
I have never taken the time, to develop what little drawing skill I have. I am likely to say, I can't draw, but I also have never worked at developing what skill I might have.
With this print, I had a start. Lingering on the floor behind my desk chair is a light-box, it was used as a slide sorter back in the day of 35mm slides. I just couldn't bring myself to toss it when we stopped using slides. I plugged it in, put the attempted print on it, put a piece of paper on top, took a dark fine point marker and created a sketch, an outline of my face.
My original thought was that this would be a good linocut image. And I have started to explore linocut for the first time in about 45 years, but the image was complex and the wrong size. Hmm what to do?
I painted a base color on a 12 by 12 canvas. Used tracing paper, basically carbon paper (who knew they still sell that?) and traced over the line drawing transferring the outline onto the canvas. I filled in a few lines here and there, then started painting.
A few days later my Sweetie Bear looked at it and said, "it's you!"
Can you do better, probably, a few of you I know for sure that you can. But it is me, trying. Using all of the tools I can to create something I don't know how to do. I am happy with it, it is in the community Arts Show of Portraits and Self-Portraits that opens today.
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