Self portrait demonstrations

A week ago, I demonstrated painting self portraits in the Wednesday and Friday classes. In the Wednesday class, I was asked to paint myself smiling – a difficult thing, since concentrating on the work at hand draws one's face into a serious, often stern expression.

Karen Lynn Ingalls self portrait in progress ( photo courtesy of Christina)

The Friday self-portrait I spent less time on. It has a longer way to go until it is completed, but you can clearly see how I found my composition and blocked in the big shapes with color. I'm just beginning to define those shapes a little further on the planes of the face. For each of these, I used only a primaries palette – yellow, red, and blue – with white.