Why so serious?

Yes, I know I look angry in this painting. No, you aren't the first person to tell me that. Do you really want to know why I look a little put off in this picture? First of all, I had to stare at myself in a mirror for one hundred hours...yes, that's right, 100 hours! YOU try holding a smile for that long. Secondly, it should not have taken me 100 hours to paint this! And third, who smiles in a self-portrait? Seriously (no pun intended), I did a little looking and easily found some examples of artists NOT smiling for their self-portraits...see below. 

I finished my self-portrait last April. It took me about four months to paint it and it was a challenge! I did change the lighting about 20 hours into it so that didn't help, but it took me a lot longer than I expected. I kept painting the same things over and over again each day, trying to get them right. All of those hours could feel like a waste of time, but then I remember that it takes 10,000 hours to get really good at something so it's not a waste when I realize those 100 hours were moving me towards my goal of mastering painting!

I've done a few other paintings since this one and recently decided to re-visit the self-portrait theme to see if I've improved my paint quality and/or gotten faster in the last four months. I started the new self-portrait a couple weeks ago and so far it feels like it's moving more quickly, but time will tell. I've been taking periodic pictures of my progress so it will be fun to see the succession when it's completed.

Rembrandt

Vincent Van Gogh

John Singer Sargeant

Mary Cassatt

Vermeer

Jeffrey Hein

Degas