Color & Light 1.1 -- BW Self Portrait

Holy crap I learned a lot from this study. Mostly having to do with simply recognizing shapes / forms. The rest was just finding the right value. The singular light source really really helped with that. It was really cool to go into this observational study after doing a marathon of master studies. I had learned so much, technique-wise, about painting and rendering, and then got to immediately apply what I had gathered with this portrait from observation! It was tricky dealing with a small mirror, but so worth the effort. I spent probably 4-5 hours on this.

With the singular light source (I had a big florescent lamp, basically a long white bar of light to my immediate left), the light and shadow masses were easy to find. My whole left side was bathed in the light, casting big solid shape masses, the whole shape relatively the same value, but subtle transitions were there (particularly my cheek) sculpting out the form. The only highlights were on my eye, nose, and the rims of my glasses. I loved having my glasses in this piece to contrast all the soft edges of my features with their hard plastic edges. It was interesting seeing the mass shadow on my face. It is all very nearly the same value, which for some reason I didn't expect. It's receiving a super soft reflected light from my hood, but the real reflected light is in the corner of my bottom eyelid. The light is bouncing from the cup of the eye socket, variating the shadow mass formed by my glasses and the curve of my eye. Core shadow was most clear on my nose, and I think that has to do with its cylindrical shape.

Thanks for checking out my post! :D