Self portrait on cradled wood panel (ran out of canvases). It’s different painting on panel. Less “tooth” and less absorbent. So the paint slides around a bit instead of sinking in. This makes it harder initially; but as the painting progresses, additional layers adhere well to bottom layers. This painting, however, was not painted in multiple layers, but was painted more directly, in a single pass with no glazing. Panels do offer the ability to achieve finer detail (if I had the patience for that) since there is less grain to the surface and paint strokes can be very small and subtle. On canvas, since it is woven, paint fills in the warp and the weft and, in a sense, these become the “pixels” and smallest details are defined by the size of these.
I didn’t achieve as good a likeness as I would have wanted (my hair is a bit thinner on top). The expression is not my normal countenance, but perhaps does justice to the grimaces I make when painting. I thought about making some adjustments, but no — the point of a portrait is not to achieve a perfect likeness, but to capture a mood and an impression of subject’s personality. On to the next! I can always paint over the whole thing if I run out of panels to paint on.
