This past week in Noah's Art Camp was "Self Portrait Week". Part of our many assignments was to complete several finished self portraits using a mirror as reference. I've played around with self portraits a little bit before but only from a photo. Referencing a mirror was definitely more challenging in the end and more rewarding. I definitely see a huge advantage to working from life now. The shapes are more "real" and light interacts differently. In the end I only had time to complete one portrait. This first stage was after about 2 hours of work. The second, and much more refined version that you can see by hovering to compare, was a long 4 to 5 additional hours of tweaking and refining the shapes. I still feel like I could pit in another 4 hours of work perfecting it but I am to a point where I'm happy with it and ready to move on.

A short animation for you of the steps I saved along the way.