Mirrors are a scary thing....

Mirrors can be frightening. Especially when you get a bit older and your eyes start to lose the ability to focus well. You have to put on glasses to read, to see the computer, to paint etc.

Sometimes it helps to take the glasses off though. Then you don't see the lines as clearly as you would with them on. The paint goes on a bit looser.

As always the point of painting a self portrait is to experiment. This time around I used a mix of Shin Han Violet Gray and titanium white as a base for the skin tones in light. Then I went over the cool base with an approximation of the actual skin color. The violet base was wet when I did this so even though the top layer was darker and should have read warmer, it mixed with the lower layer and became a warm-cool, grayed down color that appears very realistic. I like the way the violet shows through in some areas and reads as very cool. keeping the neck area cool by leaving the violet showing was an easy solution to shoving it back in space. I discovered that I like this color a lot so I will see if I can mix it with my normal palette of colors, which is very limited. If not, I'll be adding it to my portrait palette.

9" x 12"

No Glasses