Self-Portrait (Part One)

As my painting teacher loves figure and portraits, she tasked us with creating very large (30" x 40" at least) versions of a self-portrait.  We each chose artists working primarily in figure upon whom to base our style.  I decided to go with Francoise Nielly... a French artist working in oils on canvas.  She crops the face very close, emphasizes the eyes and chooses boldly abstracted colors to sculpt the facial features.

Here is an example:

Asia by Francoise Nielly.  2018.

I started with a close photo of my face (a selfie):

This photo has good contrasts but also includes my neck.

Here are a few sketches:

Sketchbook.

On canvas.

As you can see, they are not very good sketches, proportionately.  I realized later when I was trying to create the painting, then I had to return over and over to the photo, constantly correcting.  

My first attempt at the painting looked like this:

First draft of self-portrait.

The eyes are too big, the face is too wide and the top of the head is too short.  I had a lot of fun painting the hair with a large palette knife.