National Portrait Gallery

At the National Portrait Gallery, I consistently found myself drawn to self portraits. It was entirely unintentional as well; one would catch my eye and I would wander over to inspect it, only to discover it to be a self-portrait. In fact, most of the options I ended up giving myself for the subject of this assignment were self-portraits. I can’t for the life of me articulate why, either. I did end up choosing a self-portrait, specifically one done by Sir Anthony van Dyck:

It’s so… stoic. The man has a sort of relaxed confidence about him suggested by nice posture and the ease in his shoulders. There’s a calmness in his eyes as well as a hint of intrigue. He looks approachable, honestly (Maybe due to the raised eyebrows? There’s some sort of attentiveness to him, right?). Perhaps that’s why I was drawn to the portrait. Another thought, with the frame it almost reminds me of looking into a mirror, which I find neat.

Everything about this portrait is soft, too. The hair and face specifically. It contrasts with the clothes, which for a lack of a better word, look a little crunchy. I think it has to do with how simple the clothes are compared to the complex layers of the face and hair. This portrait is just overall the most beautiful thing ever, and I would actually sell my soul to capture people that well.

Speaking of capturing things through art:

I consider the landscape one to be unfinished, and I’m rather unsatisfied with it, but I learned a LOT from it so I can’t really complain. I dislike the tree, but I actually know what I would do differently next time. Instead of dotting every leaf like I did, I would probably render the leaves a little differently. More subtle?? I don’t know, I can see it in my mind but cannot for the life of me properly articulate it. I also really like the various dots, lines, and shapes of colors I did to replicate the bush. It almost looks like there’s a bit of depth to it? I think next time I paint a landscape I’ll play around with a similar technique, but go about it more carefully so it’s hopefully not as messy.

As for the black and white portrait, I was upset at my past portraits for being too grey and not having enough bold colors in them. So naturally, instead of trying to push the boundaries of color, I took it away entirely. Which is totally the right approach to art (it’s not). God do I love value studies, though. I couldn’t help myself! I painted this one without sketching first, so I felt this one out as I went. This took away the pressure I think, because I approached it as just something “fun” more than technical? Which I think helped me out a lot. I also took my time with this one and completed it over the course of five days. On my fifth and final day, I was working on it in a cafe (in Wales, how romantic is that??) and a group of women approached me and asked if I had a website. When I replied with no, they said I NEEDED to make one, and I could make money doing this. Which is an insane concept to me, because I don’t perceive my skills to be good enough to make money off of? Sometimes I wonder if we’re complimenting the art itself, or the potential of the artist that we can see. Or is that just me? Regardless, it was a very kind thing to say, and it helped me feel a little less unsatisfied with this portrait. People are so nice, ugh.

Actually, if for some reason you’re interested in seeing my weird process for this one, I took photos along the way. You really do have to live by the saying “trust the process”, because the first photo is genuinely the most unpromising start to a portrait I’ve ever seen.