Annual Self Portrait 2023

This year the portrait is in coloured pencil for the first time ever.  The pose is an upward looking one of me in my favourite chair at home.  I took the photo with my iPad.  I decided to take off my t-shirt first because some people had been giving me stick about how long it would be before I painted myself naked. The photo came out brilliantly from an artist’s perspective.  First, the face is divided into lots of shapes.  This doesn’t just make for an interesting painting but also makes it easier to break down the job and to keep track of things – something especially important when using a slow medium like coloured pencil.  Second, the flash from the iPad threw up lots of interesting light and colour patterns on the face.  How could anyone not want to paint me now?

In reality the wall behind me was magnolia and the chair black, but I went for colours that I could see in the photo rather than the real ones.  The wall has several layers of colour in it: a grey, a blue, two reds, a yellow, a green and a layer that was one green on one side and a different green on the other.

For the face, I started with the eyes, looking to get them as accurate as possible.  Just as every year, my right eye looks fine but my left is a bit weird.  I’m starting to think it might really be weird – this is too much of a coincidence.  Once I was happy with the eyes, I started on the rest of the face.  I put on loads of layers of colour, all with quite soft pressure and holding the pencils a long way from the tops.  It takes a lot of patience but it’s the only way to a great coloured pencil painting.  I had great fun throwing in all the weird colours I could see in the photo, including blues around the eyes, greens between the mouth and nose and lots of purples in the shadows.

After two 2-3 hour sessions, I decided I was close to finishing.  The paper was starting to feel full with colour, even though it might not look it.  So at this point I blended all the background colours with a paper stick thing and burnished all over the face with ivory.  As a finishing touch, I scratched out a few hairs with a craft knife in the eyebrows and nostril.  And that was me done.

I must say I’m really pleased with this one.  There’s the likeness, the colours and the Gil Kane style up-the-nose angle, but there’s also the way it’s telling a story.  The angle, the lighting, the lack of a t-shirt the look in the right eye: it’s as if I’ve just heard a noise upstairs and have stopped what I’m doing to listen.  And that’s before we start wondering whether I’m sat there naked.  This one’s a big success in my book but won’t be going up for sale as nobody’s going to want me up on their wall.  It is, though, being entered into the 2024 Derwent Art Prize.  Let’s see how that goes.

And, of course, I should take this opportunity to compare this self portrait to previous ones.  I thought last year’s couldn’t be beaten but it may well have been.