Self-portrait drawing, tracing and painting.....

Learning to watercolor paint is a very slow and time consuming process. Learning to paint a portrait is especially slow and difficult. There is a tendency to fix the feature of the face, interpreting what is there and picking out it's particular characteristics. Or, create an idealized image that looks nothing like the person being painted. This must be why our teacher gave us the assignment of painting a self-portrait. It was the kind thing to do!! The first thing that was done was to take a photo of each person in the class and from that we did a value's study. This is to establish relationships between the various parts of the face and creating details.
Next, we traced the outline of our face onto tracing paper and transferred that line drawing onto the watercolor paper. In the end product I decided to remove my glasses from the transfer.
Finally we mixed our paint, French Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna. We made four pools of paint and added different amounts of water to each pool to create a monochromatic mix of colors. The first paint to be put on the paper was very, very light. Then each layer was darkened at each application, which was four times.
Now, this picture is not in anyway perfect but it was a very fulfilling experience and it has helped me understand the process that portrait painters go through to create their masterpieces. My next self-portrait will be done in color. You will have to wait a while to see that!!