Value Portrait

• Essential Question: What are the key factors in painting a realistic self-portrait?

• Purpose:

  • To determine where values change when light moves over an uneven surface by using a range of gray values to paint a realistic self-portrait;

  • To become familiar with the structure of the face by painting a realistic self-portrait.

  • To effectively communicate an image that looks like you through careful examination of the values of your face 

• Medium: Acrylic Paint on Acetate

• Size: 8.5” x 11”

• Reflection: 

I think really focusing on specific shapes and values on your face makes the biggest difference. That is the part that shows the human side of everyone and what makes people look different from each other. Looking at dark spots or other shapes on your face, and different colors on your face also. Especially in the eyes, I think making the eyes as close to what yours look like as possible makes a big impact on making your portrait look like you. 

I feel good about my portrait, my expectations going into this assignment weren’t the highest simply because my drawing skills of people in the past weren’t great but I think I exceeded my personal expectations for my portrait. Once again I think the eyes were very important, among other things as well but the eyes really stood out to me because when I would look at other peoples portraits many pieces would be similar but the eyes really made the portrait look like the person. I think the hardest part was having the paint look smooth because sometimes I had to paint in different directions and that left some splotches and gaps behind. But some were fixable with a second layer. 

I learned that you really need to pre-plan what darkness each part of your face was going to be beforehand instead of along the way during the painting step because like I said before, the colors of different  spots are what making the portraits look different from each other due to them matching your skin tones in certain spots on your face. I would say that the portraits require many different shades of colors and multiple brushes to be very precise whereas the still life used about 2 or 3 different shades and it was much more simple in the sense of value. I think the actual making of the still life was harder but the coloring and value section was more complicated with the portrait.