Self Portrait 2025

As promised, it was a self portrait day today. I’ve seen people online talking about applying to Portrait Artist Of The Year, and it’s got me feeling fidgety, even though the closing date for entries isn’t until the 7th of February.

I decided to go for a triple portrait using the traffic light scheme to wow the judges. And for the first time, I’m using three different source photos rather than the same source photo and value plan in all three portraits. Three different poses tell a story and it’s up to the viewer to write their own story. Although, having said that, I thought if subtitling this one The Three Stages Of Hearing A Gary Delaney Joke.

I followed my usual process for paintings like this. I did screw up on the green painting, leaving a couple of highlights unmasked, but managed to cover my tracks with some white gouache.

After the third layer went down, I wasn’t feeling great about this one and thinking about writing it off as a fail and doing another self portrait later this week but when the masking fluid came off everything burst into life and my plans changed again. You wouldn’t think that removing masking fluid can transform a painting and surprise me but it genuinely can. I did still need to put in some small corrections, though, to improve the likenesses. Most of these were white highlights in the eyes and a change to the shape of the foreheads. And that was me done.

Yes, that was a successful day. Not that anyone will want a painting like this (Halloween being over for another year) but it’s not up for sale. It will almost certainly be my PAOTY entry at some point, once I’ve decided which two paintings I’ll be putting forward as support acts.

Oh, and just one more thing. Here’s how my selfies have progressed over the years: