Self Portrait 2026

After a sleep and a walk, I decided that yesterday’s painting wasn’t going to be next year’s official portrait me Portrait Artist Of The Year Entry. It was the third time I’d painted faces hidden in mountain landscapes but the first time I’d done this with limited use of masking fluid. And somehow, doing away with the masking fluid and having to take more care over my dark shapes clanged my painting style and the results. I thought it looked like a statue of me carved in ice and someone on LinkedIn (hi Iain!) thought it looked like a limestone statue. Either way, it looked more like a statue than a mountain, so it seemed weird to have only half the face showing. So today I painted the full head in the some pose and same style but with the intention of creating a portrait and not a landscape.

So, to repeat from yesterday, this was painted using tundra blue, tundra orange, tundra green and tundra pink. And the process was to:

• create a two value plan within the Notanizer app
• put down pencil outlines of the dark shapes and of the head
• put down masking fluid in any area where detail and precision is needed (which was mainly the eyes but a little in the neck)
• paint in the sky with the blue, the orange and the pink and dab with kitchen paper to create texture
• paint in the darks with all four colours, applying them randomly and allowing them to run together
• remove the masking fluid
• create a three value plan in the Notanizer app with the dark/mid cutoff point in the same position as the dark/highlight cutoff on the two colour plan
• mix up really watery versions of all four colours and apply these randomly in the midline areas, using the three value plan in the app as only a rough guide
• think about whether to apply any more thick or watery paint to create more dark or mid tone areas to improve the likeness

In the last step, I decided that no tinkering was necessary, so that was me done.

And, yes, I’m happy with the final result. This will be my 2026 self portrait and my PAOTY entry. It’s statuesque, it’s a pose with attitude but with a tiny bit of fear in the eyes. I can see. But of Paddy McGuinness in there and a bit of Frankenstein’s monster where the sky hasn’t come all the way down to the head in the top left. But this is a painting, not a photo. Good paintings are all about expressing feelings, telling stories and capturing essence. This is a good painting. I’m happy.

And here’s the usual paraded annual self portraits for comparison. There’s a general upward trend, but with. 2023 looking stronger and 2024 weaker than they should given their position in the queue.