Painting: Process of a Self Portrait

I'm on a roll with this painting thing. Here's my new one.

I've had the idea for this painting for a while. Like, before I went to uni. So that's a pretty long while.

Having the free time and my visit to the BP Portrait Award finally pushed me to get it done.

Most of my paintings are just direct copies of photographs (which I don't have a problem with) but this painting is a composite of different images.

I knew I wanted a graffiti background so I went to my favourite source for graffiti and that's a video I took at uni one night when my friends and I were walking through an underpass on the way to a party.

I could have just googled graffiti but I like having a personal relationship with the imagery I use.

I took a few screenshots from the videos and picked out a coupla different bits of graffiti to use in the painting.  

For the figure in the painting I used myself just so I wouldn't have to wait around for someone to model for me.

I wanted my pink jacket to feature in the painting because I wanted the challenge of capturing all the folds and creases in it. I knew I didn't want the top under the jacket to be red (Red and pink? Really?) but I figured I would just paint it a different colour rather than bother changing. Because with paint these things are possible. Fascinating.

I put my camera on self-timer to take the photos and set up my room so it was dark with just a spot light coming from one side because I knew I wanted directional artificial lighting for the painting.

I stuck a blank canvas behind my head so that I'd be able to clearly see my hair which would help when I came to painting.

So there's a little behind the scenes into the images I used for my new painting. I hope it was interesting.

I won't be blogging next week as I'm going camping. Wish me good weather!