Daily Self-Portraits: Week 7

Plan for this week: Revision and reflection

Form the previous weeks there are several aspects and approaches that I would like to follow further:

1. Color to depict mood and atmosphere
2. Luminosity through color and tonal contrast and layering
3. Additive and subtractive painting, textured grounds
4. Bodily interaction

I think it would be beneficial to dedicate one week to one specific theme.

Task for this week: 1) working in dry pastel only, using dedicated more saturated color and limited palette (complementary) to convey more mood and atmosphere, more close up views.

Learnings:

• I really liked to work in this series with limited color and to ‘discover’ certain areas of the face.
• Conceptually there could be more to build around the idea of mirror – image – observer. The reflection of myself in a mirror – be seen by myself but also by an external observer.
• Working in pastel is for my a way to explore marks, tone and color close to the surface. Something I started to do more in oil.

 

#49: Dry pastel on Clairefontaine PastelMat® paper (50 x 35 cm) ‘Brown – Grey’

=> Image. picture within a picture – frame within in a frame. Who sees whom?

#48: Dry pastel on Clairefontaine PastelMat® paper (50 x 35 cm) ‘White – Red’

=> working on tonal contrast in one color within different hues.

#47: Dry pastel on PastelCard (40 x 30 cm) ‘Orange – Blue’

=> Before making this painting I was afraid that orange could turn the face into a rather artificial something. However, I am astonished and satisfied with the final result. I feel that adding hard edges with strong tonal contrasts can make a painting more powerful, more engaging and more vivid.

#46: Dry pastel on PastelCard (40 x 30 cm) ‘Yellow – Violet’

=> This reminds me of some works by Kaye Donachie through its mystic at time blurring marks. I could envision to add some further ‘landscape’ marks to the portrait (see Kaye Donachie ‘Clouds are pushing in grey reluctance’, 2009 – click here)

#45: Dry pastel on PastelCard (40 x 30 cm) ‘Green – Red’

=> I already worked with the complementary green-red on still life (click here) – for me at that times surprisingly successfully.  I noticed later that this could be seen as a reclining person although I painted it standing in front of a mirror with head bends backwards. I think it comes with the way I depicted the background (lower half). Through the rather non-human green flesh one could think of a sick person laying in bed.

#44: Dry pastel on PastelCard (40 x 30 cm) ‘Red – Purple’

=> The red-purple gives the painting a sense of energy. The intentionally kept red eyes (like when one is taken a picture with camera and flash) are making the image quite intense. It also adds a moment of surprise.

#43: Dry pastel on PastelCard (40 x 30 cm) ‘Blue – Orange’

=> the blue reminds me of Avatar. Does this painting convey a sense of melancholy (see me research on blue in painting – click here)