How to paint a self-portrait

by Tissa Hewavitarane

Creating a self portrait begins when you look at the history of self-portraiture and the work of some of the world's most famous artists. Examples of work by the masters and by contemporary artists are analysed in terms of techniques, approach and style in a practical and highly visual manner, illustrated with step-by-step drawings and paintings.

A careful study defines and illustrates the important factors that determine the quality of the final result. Understanding and mastering facial anatomy, handling composition and mood, setting yourself up, understanding and manipulating light, understanding colour and creating colour effects are the most important factors that you have to bear in mind to turnout a good self portrait.

A self-portrait done with pastel

Artists always reflect themselves in their painting the mood and colour schemes of their works. Self portraits have been of great interest to viewers and painters alike. For the spectators, they can provide a marvellous insight into the character of artists and also into their art itself, as the work of the old masters, such as Rembrandt, reveals.

For artists the attractions of the self-portrait include the fact that it enables them to paint fro life without hiring a model or being limited by time other than their own.

Origin

Self portraiture is also the best way of learning how to depict the human face, and in a range of media and styles. There are examples of work by the old masters and the new accompanied by many methods and approaches. They have commented on their art expressing the joys and pains of producing self-portraits and describing how they painted each piece linking their written thoughts on the work done by them. Self-portraiture has existed since the ancient Egyptians when a few painters in the middle of the second millennium B.C. were sculpting narrative reliefs on tomb walls and adding their images to the carvings, some of which were later painted. These artists observed themselves in reflective polished stone, such as mirrors made from burnished metal. Much later, Roman painters were painting portraits on to wood panels, canvas and walls. During the European Dark Ages the light of culture was shining bright on the east.

In China Wan Hsi-Chin, a calligrapher, is documented as having painted his portrait with the aid of a mirror. But secular paintings were frequently destroyed by succeeding dynasties and unfortunately the self-portrait no longer exists. However, later many of them painted in water-colour and ink on silk that lasted for long periods.

Among them there is a striking perceptive image by Kuan Hsiu that displays remarkable sophistication and very elegant brushwork. The earliest traceable two-dimensional self-portraits in Europe are in many manuscripts.

Patrons

The monks who produced them occasionally depicted themselves in the elaborate capitals they painted and showed themselves presenting their work on their patrons. Later painters soon found another means of introducing themselves into their work. In their images of St. Luke painting Virgin Mary artists frequently depicted themselves as St. Luke, their patron saint. One of the first painters known to do this was the Netherlandish artist Rogier Van der Weyden (1399-1400-64). Other artists were incorporating their images into paintings of a more secular nature. The first artist to leave a series of studies of the self was Albrecht Durer (1471-1484). This was followed by an image in 1493, advertising himself as a handsome and suitable husband. Durer even painted himself as Christ in his self-portrait a 'Saviour of the World' (1500-1506) possibly to make the statement that as an artist he was different from other men, and that the source of his talents were divine. In the 16th century mirrors were first made from glass backed with mercury. These gave a better reflection than the metal mirrors that had been used until then.

It was not until Rembrandt that self-portraiture really became an art from in its own right. His self-portraits provided as with the most complete usual record of his life-time to an confident young man. Rembrandt relied on an elaborate studio arrangement with double mirror to paint some of his self-portraits. After Rembrandt almost every successful artist painted a self-portrait.

In Spain, Velazquez ( 1599-1660). In France Nicolas Poussin (1593-1665) produced two self-portraits considered as a classic. One of the few women artists of the time, Marrie-Antoinette, Elizabeth Van Lebrun (1755-1842) was also producing self-portraits.

Influential

But the modesty of her appearance in them was also greatly influential on women's fashion of the time. In England, there were no great English born portrait painters until the 1740s. George Romney (1734-1802) and Sir Joshua Reynolds (1721-1792) the great 18th century English painters and portraitists were less formal and more relaxed in their work. Self-portraiture was better represented among post impressionists such as Paul Cezanne and particularly Vincent Van Gogh. Among the Expressionists self-portraiture was an ideal medium for their painting philosophy. The nature of artists today comes through their work much more strongly than before.