When I first thought of using orange over blue, I thought: "It's going to end up looking like John Boehner!", but it worked out great as I was able to gradiate the face from bright yellow to dark red, which contrasted nicely with all the different shades of blue behind.
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| Self-portrait in orange and blue - Acrylic painting with collaged paint skins - 20x20in |
This self portrait says a lot about me, it uses a palette that I love at this time, with highly saturated colors, and several techniques that I have learned up to this point like: thick texture, water spray, sponge, squirt bottles, rag, paint skins, digital imaging.
I began by putting tile grout over the wood panel and then I applied phthalos and titanium white with a sponge, doing three layers to add darker blues each time. Then I squirted pure blue and white to give motion and additional contrast.
I prepared the paint skins usnig white only, then I cut them into random shapes, which I colored randomly. I should not have colored them before arranging the face, but I was curious to see how the shades of orange would look against the background. I used cadmium red, orange and diarylide yellow.
I then started to assemble the face from the pieces, looking periodically at my reference photograph. Needless to say I had to recolor some pieces and tear a few of them to adapt them to the different features of the face. I thought I had gotten the shapes right, but when I superimposed a picture of the first collage over the reference photo, I realized I had to make some corrections. I realize now I have very little chin and a big forehead. My nose is small and my cheeks wide. I repeated the process back and forth from the computer to the collage two more times until I was satisfied.
Then I glued the pieces to the wood panel with medium.
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