Last week, I painted my first self portrait since high school art class. I thought it would be a neat addition to my website, and all sites where I have a profile picture. After the fact, I’m happy I did this project, but boy was it tough.

I realized I have no concept of what I look like, because I don’t actually look at my face that much - only in the morning and evening in the mirror. I know the facial features of my loved ones much better. They’re engrained in my mind. It’s funny, Ryan looked at my painting and said, '“your eyes aren’t that small!” This made me realize a self portrait is simply our perception of ourselves. And that’s what makes it interesting. My perception is that I have very small eyes and ears. Maybe, in actuality, they aren’t as small as I think. While this painting felt like a struggle, I’m glad I did it. It was an important exercise in self-discovery.

While it’s great to make a self portrait based on perception, we still want it to look like us. Mine just didn’t look like me at a first pass. Getting my features right was difficult, so I had a little trick that helped.

When I was done with the portrait, I rearranged my features a bit in Photoshop, using a picture I snapped of myself in the same position. I’ve done this before with portraits and it works every time. I overlayed the portrait on my photograph and adjusted my features accordingly. My lips were way off, so I reworked those. Also the spacing of my nose and eyes needed adjusting. While these changes were minor, it made the painting look more like me. Below is the before and after. I know this photoshop work may be considered as cheating, so I was hesitant at first. Then I told myself, “This is my project. There are no rules. I can do whatever I want!”

If I were to do the project over again, I would trace my face on tracing paper, and use that underneath my painting for reference. By the time I thought of this, it was too late.

The fun part of the painting was trying to capture my personality. I’m always wearing black and white clothing, hence the striped shirt. And a top knot is my go-to hairdo, complete with earrings. I’m usually wearing lipstick too. I always have my vintage egg plate palette on me, as well as my green Princeton Lauren brushes. And the plant behind me is the same one that I’m looking at in my studio right now - a fiddle leaf fig my mom gave me. Painting the minis of my work was fun too, trying to choose pieces that best captured style. And the hunter green background was a no brainer, because green is my favorite color.

Several artists I follow paint a self portrait every year. While this sounds intimidating, it would be a cool way to capture how I change every year. It could also be great practice in painting portraits. Trust me, I need it.

Do any of you paint self-portraits? If so, share a link the comments below! I’d love to take a look!