Sunday, June 3, 2007

Scary I know!



One of the things that I find myself not doing enough of, or at all, is the self portrait. I know it is strange to think about painting oneself, but it can be a useful tool in understanding facial features, and the evolution of yourself I suppose. If you think about how this can be utilized, you only have to look at Vincent Van Gogh and all of his great self portraits that he created over his lifetime. With that, when the opportunity came up to work on a self portrait for the Children's Book Illustrators Guild, I knew it was going to be a fun test to do another portraiture of myself. The goal was to create a self portrait in the style that our children's book work is done in. So i stylized my image a little to fit the technique that I use and went to town in creating this image. I know it is scary, but you'll get used to it. Let me know of any thoughts you guys have about your self image and portraits that you do! Here were the steps that I took to get to the final version. As previously posted at the beginning of the week, you saw how the background was completed as well.


2 comments:

Cynthia said...

Thanks for posting your self portrait! I think it's fun and it gives me a chance to *sort* of see whose blog I'm visiting.

Shawn McCann said...

Glad you like my self portrait Cynthia. I guess I really haven't posted any other images other than a sketch of myself before. Maybe I might have to reveal my photo, or keep everyone guessing with new little self portraits here and there?