For my self portrait I started with a pose, but since I hate taking a picture and drawing it that way I experimented using a mirror. I like to be able to look at myself from different angles and not limit myself to a photograph.
After I played around and found a position I liked I did a simple sketch drawing and marker to choose colors.
After that I had to choose a medium to try out for it so I experimented with acrylics because so far this year I have not used them and wanted to learn how to master them. I used fan brushes to keep the texture the same and added traces of blue and red in the painting because even though I wanted to have the purple and yellow complementary colors, I felt the blue and red broke the purple down into it's parts enabling me to add small traces of color and create more depth. I really love my color choices because the red pulls the pinker background in and helps the lips stand out. The style I was going for was simple but had more texture than curvature and I felt it was a neat contrast between the edginess of the hair and the soft of the lips and eyes.
My teacher suggested I go large for this project and keep the same color and style so I worked on it a bit and created my final piece.