After a few days of resetting I decided to give the self-portrait another go, I started again from the ground up and took a series of new reference images, in a new Hawaiian shirt, in a silly way this change of shirts marked a change in approach as the original shirt was one I got in my first year of uni when my life was very much scattered, but this second shirt was one I got more recently, a gift from my long time girlfriend and it is kind of the zeitgeist of my settled and more organized life. Of course, this shirt wouldn’t make it into the painting but it was an almost ritualistic, superstitious gesture I did for myself, to help me mentally reset and come at this new painting with a more methodical approach.

The photos above are my favorites and ultimately I decided to go for the final image, While reflecting on the previous failures I decided to make a more delicate painting, with smaller marks and pale skin, I wanted to paint my skin pale to remove the realism that many people expect when looking at a portrait, a pale base encourages me to paint with less harsh contrast and I knew this would prevent the distracting mark-making that I usually embrace. All this was an attempt to strip away the desire for realism, the desire for the projection of a mood, emotion and even preventing myself from becoming a reflection of the viewer’s own emotions.

After a few hours of painting, I realized that I was losing the likeness, This painting developed very quickly but I realized again, I messed up the proportions, I tried to fix this by changing the head shape and eye but I couldn’t get to a point I was happy with so decided to restart, yet again…

I did, however, use this failure to create this sketch, blocking out and toning my head with neon colors, this really helped me see what I was doing rather than just automatically assuming I knew what I was doing and not looking properly and diligently

I know I have no likeness or anything that actually resembles me in this drawing, but it did help me see the error of my ways and return with a new approach.