I don't like portraits.

I don't like portraits. Plain and simple.

We've been working on this thing called "Tempera Batik", my dear viewer. (Chances are, if you're reading this, you're either Madame Kiick, or another HT Art student, so you're well aware of what I'm talking about.

I don't enjoy this assignment for one reason: You are your worst critic.

I learned that this statement is in fact true, through much irritation. At first, we had to re-create ourselves at a much larger scale than our original photo. That was hell enough. I get very frustrated very easy when it comes to art, and so many spots of my face were just not coming out how I had wanted. 


The shape of my face, for example. My chin just looked so off, for so long. I avoided it until I was finished with the rest of my face...BIG MISTAKE. It turns out, the reason it looked so wide and far from my lips, was because I had proportioned the entire face wrong. My eyes were up just a taaaaad bit too far, but that tad bit made a HUGE difference. I ended up having to re-do all of my face. Sounds fun, right?
Nope! I'm just thankful I could get work done 11th period.
  My biggest problem I could say was probably my eyes, but I now know how to draw eyes much more sufficiently. The placement, as I said, was all off. Plus, my amount of makeup had a big effect on the outcome:

Painting is a whole new story. A whole new level of frustration, rather.
I decided to try a blueish gray color, with a tint of green. Though I thought it would work when I saw the color pallete, on paper was a different story. The blue turned out more gray than I had hoped, and when I looked around, I noticed many pupils had picked a blue-esque color. I was convinced that blue wasn't for me.

I'm currently working on a brown, that I believe has what looks like the tiniest hint of yellow. I don't like painting much, when it comes to the shading of my face, especially when I only have intervals of 45 minutes every day to work on it. But I must say I'm enjoying the brown more than the blue, for sure. Looking at the other student's portraits that are a emerald green color, I'm strongly considering that as an option. Its a beautiful shade of green, and I would love painting my eyes with it.

As you can see, when I get bothered I get sloppy. The back painting is the one I am currently in progress with, apologies for it being in the back of the pile. (Blame the photographer--not me!)

This process that is very very time consuming, and I can't wait to see what the end result comes out as.