Today I was wanting to finish my first ever self portrait in gouache but it turned out that this was just the beginning half. The focus was going to be on defining the planes of the head clearly, but I lost focus after an hour and decided to continue tomorrow.
Gouache is nice for clear and separated areas of paint kind of like the paint by number sheets that kids do. So my self portrait in gouache was supposed to be a lesson in the planes of the head and I envisioned nice clear planes defined over the head each with their respective general value and color.
James Gurney has a great post about the planes of the head on his blog. I hope to come back to this painting tomorrow and achieve something close to what he has. I think the biggest issue that I’m having here is generalizing the head well, I get too caught up in the details.
My Self Portrait in Gouache Setup
