Face Time

It's a new Semester, with new ideas and projects in mind.
First thing on the bill is a little building exercise for a class of mine, (that is not studio by the way) the ever infamous self portrait. Any medium, any style.
I've got thing set up for painting and it has been over a year since I painted a self portrait last. So to get the paint juices flowing I've decided to dive into my rusty skills. I realized how much I'd forgot already about oil painting when I started to gesso things up! I was off to a rough start. But you know what, I decided to wing the rest of it, and in no time I remembered stuff, like that it's easier and less wasteful to mix your colours with a palette knife. *reminder to self, pick up a palette knife!

But here's what I've got thus far, I've included two other pre-in the works shots as well.

The outline and the gist of what I wanted to do.
I originally had a pinkish gesso down. After talking to a painting expert I realized what I wanted should actually go on top of a cool back ground. I went half way there with this shitty purple.
I was surprised how much the colour did mess with how the other colours I was putting down. Just as the expert said it would... I was always adding more white because I felt that the skin tone was way to warm for what I wanted. (as you can see in the third shot how different it ends up looking once that purple was covered.

My goal is to get this kind of snobbish up turned nose thing going on. I want it to have a little bit of *oh you think your so great do you* look to it. Why? Well I find that often when people are asked to provide a self portrait of themselves (painted or otherwise) they want to show all the best qualities they posses. Kind eyes, great skin, not a blemish in sight. Really they want to present is the idealized version of themselves. Not that they don't have those qualities but they are not showing some of the other... less idealized ones.
And sometimes I find that I can be a snob.
Yes, I know... a snob.
So the up turn face and the case down eyes are hopefully going to convey that.
And don't you worry, I'm totally idealizing some of my other features... Flawless skin? Yes please!Once the hair and background were placed in, the image cooled right the hell down. And as always I've used a limited colour palette in my skin tones, but I hope to deepen those up on the next go. The hair I want to go much deeper, dark and swarming, I kind of want it to take over the rest of the space, even blend away completely into the background.
And of course work more on creating that cast down look of pride and superiority that I some times strut around with.