Maria visited the National Portrait Gallery over the summer to get inspiration for a self-portrait assignment. She studied several portraits that used different painting styles and techniques. In particular, she was drawn to an artist named Artful Curisities who combined realism and expressionism. Maria tried to emulate Artful Curisities' use of bold colors to represent tones and textures in her own self-portrait, which she painted with acrylics. While her first attempt had some flaws, Maria felt the project improved her painting skills and helped her evaluate different artistic styles.

1. SUMMER
ASSIGNMENT
2014
Maria Espinoza 1633

2. VISIT TO
THE NATIONAL
PORTRAIT
GALLERY
During the summer holidays I visited
the National portrait gallery to get
some inspiration before I started
doing my own self portrait. To the
left there’s 4 portraits that got my
interest as they all have different
styles of painting. Some are very
expressive and some are realistic,
what I like about all of them is the
use of colour and tone.
Roald Dahl
by Sir Matthew Arnold Bracy
Smith
The Artist
by Catherine Goodman
Jordan
Mother #1 by Alan Coulson,
by Yunsung Jang,

3. A STUDY OF A PORTRAIT
PAINTING
Helen Mirren
by Ishbel Myerscough
(National Portrait gallery)
Ishbel Myerscough used Oil painting but I used normal
colouring pencils. My main focus while I was painting
this is to focus on the toning. As you can tell my version
is more vibrant as I used more darker colours to show
more contrasting between colours. Overall, this study
did help me to elaborate for my final self portrait.
Ian Mckellen
by Clive Smith 1967
(National Portrait gallery)
Clive Smith used Oil painting but I used normal tone
pencils. The shading was very hard to study on as the
original painting is using colour therefor I had to
concentrate more on the shades. Overall, this study
improve my drawing skills.

4. INSPIRATION
ARTIST
by Artful
Curisities
Used oil
painting
I chosen Artful Curisities as I love the
way he paints, its between a
combination of realism and expressive,
I also like the tone as he mainly focus
on the tone but instead of using normal
toning colour, he uses bold contrasting
colours to represent the toning depth.
The composition he used is quite
simple and shows the entire face
therefore I’m willing to do the same. I’m
also inspired by the texture he creates
that’s why I chose to paint this study
with oil pastels as it’s one of the best
media to use to represent texture but
for my final self portrait I’m going to
use oil painting as the key to this
project is have a self portrait painting
therefore I cant use other media’s.
Overall, I’m quite happy I chosen Artful
Curisities as he has loads of key
elements on the way he paints therefore
I’m willing to challenge myself and do a
self portrait inspired by
Artful Curisities.

5. PORTRAIT
PAINTING
This is my self portrait, it took me long to
decide the position of my face and it was
very hard to find the right skin tone as
my skin tone varies. What could have
been better was to draw careful before
starting to paint as I drew my face too
slim therefore I had to use paint to add
more width to my face which helped but
it wasn’t very accurate and I honestly
think my eyes aren’t very realistic as its to
big and bold but it was good first try.
Overall, this self portrait helped me
improve my painting skills. My chosen
artist is an expressive artist which uses
colours to add tone and depth but I didn’t
use contrasting colours as my artist did
as I found it too hard but I did focus on
the tone like my artist did.

6. MY OPINION OF THE PROJECT
My opinion on this project is that it certainly improved my fine art skills as
the main concentration was painting and finding inspiration on other self
portrait artist. This project will definitely help me decide on weather I’m
going to pick fine art or design or multi media for the next project were
going to do. This project also helped me improved my evaluation skills on
analysing other artist work on what caught my eye, what I liked it and how
can this help me for my final piece self portrait. Overall, it was good project
to explore on the fine art side.
EVALUATION
My final self portrait was mainly focusing on the tones as the artist I chosen
got so many toning technique therefore I decided to take those technique
forwards and try it myself. The colours I used wasn’t very vibrant and
contrasting like my artist used but I did use bold simple colours but I could
of used expressive colours but I wasn't brave enough. The media I used was
acrylics, it was very easy to blend and mix but it dries quickly so you cant
redo stuff, unfortunately I did loads of mistake so acrylics wasn't the best
chose as I count redo my mistakes. Overall, it was quite a challenge but this
will help me learn from my mistakes and I wont make the same mistakes for
my next on going projects.