Self Portrait

Watercolor Painting by Dennis Pendleton. It has been a few years since I painted a portrait so I decided to use myself as a model. I put on all my favorite things for plein air painting, Levi jacket, red plaid shirt, and Panama hat. I had a friend take some pictures of me in my front yard so that I would be in the sunlight and I used those for reference. The drawing took forever as I sight measured my features and the patterns on the shirt and jacket. I actually left most of the details on the jacket for later when I was painting.

I started with the hat and painted it with yellow ochre and burnt sienna. I wanted to show the sunlight seeping through the weave of the hat so, on the underside of the brim, I added a little transparent yellow. For the skin tones on the face, I mixed yellow ochre with cadmium red light and, for the cast shadow area over the eyes, I added a little mineral violet to the mixture. For the shadow areas on my neck, I added burnt sienna to the skin tone mixture. As I was painting, I added rose dore, burnt sienna, cobalt violet, and cerulean blue in different places. For example, on the chin you can see cerulean blue and cobalt violet. For my lips, I used cadmium red light and made sure there were only a couple little hard edges. There was a cast shadow from my upper lip on my teeth and I painted that with a light value of yellow ochre.

Painting my eyes in shadow was a challenge because I had to decide how much detail to include. This is where the camera often fails because the pictures didn't show my eyes in the shadow. I put on my hat and looked in a mirror which helped. My left hand was painted with the same col0rs and I left unpainted white paper for the finger nails. My shirt is cadmium red and Indian red with lemon yellow stripes and a few cerulean blue stripes. The Levi jacket was a mystery and I finally used French ultramarine blue with a little burnt sienna. I could only do small parts at a time because of all the stitching so I had to keep matching the color and value. For the faded parts on the jacket, I lifted out some of the color while it was still wet.

Just a quick statement about shadows and cast shadows. Shadows have soft edges as they move away from the light and cast shadows have hard edges where the light is blocked out. You can see shadows with soft edges on my chin and cheeks and hard edges on the cast shadows where my nose and the hat brim block out the light. This painting took longer than I thought it would but it was a challenge and that made it fun. Happy Painting! Dennis Pendleton