Christmas Project: Self Portrait

So many possibilities to be had but again I thought I would focus on a part of me, well my mother again. The thought of flowers but I couldn't just randomly place them on my face, so I went to see if each one had a meaning and they did.

After having a few flowers to choose from, I set about drawing a rough self portrait on paper.

Christmas being a time of giving, I'd ended up with to many canvases and decided to use one for this project.

I then painted it with Gesso, putting an extra gloopy layer to give it texture.

Once that was dry, I drippled black, watered acrylic on it. Letter it stream down and gather in any crevices.

I then traced my portrait outline over the top, which can be seen barely in this photo above.

Using a watered down acrylic, I started to paint in my face and hair. Giving it an almost translucent look.

Already I start to notice mistakes, how my eyes are not level  and my forehead huge.

But I persevered, thinking that the flowers would cover most, if not all mistakes.

Having used masking tape in so many of my previous paintings, I thought it would help to highlight the flowers pouring from my eyes and mouth.

The masking tape worked well, it definitely highlighted the flowers - Giving the haunting affect I was after.

When I was finished I was happy with the overall affect. A few weeks later and with the other student's, my painting was hung up in the canteen. I was given comments on how eerie it was.