This was a challenge. I've never tried a serious portrait, but a face is just another object. You look at shapes and their relationship to the shapes around them and just put them down. But we all know what a human face should look like and I'm especially familiar with this one, albeit its mirror image. There are sections of my face that seem spot on, other areas not so much.
Still, I give myself kudos for trying and the overall lighting looks good, especially since it wasn't very dramatic. Instead of taking a photo with a strong shadow, I just leaned into my computer's camera. My wife wondered why I picked an evil looking expression. What can I say? Like Gahan Wilson, "I paint what I see."
This was done with a limited palette of Cadmium Red, Yellow Ochre, Ultramarine Blue, along with Ivory Black and Permanent White. I was wearing a bright purple hoodie which I thought I could get with blue and red, but I think Cad Red must have yellow in it which pushed it to grey. Also, started out very organized then every book and tutorial I've ever studied flew out of my head. Roughly 3.5 x 8 inches in my Pentalic sketchbook. I haven't painted in several weeks outside of these approximately 2x3 inch valentine cards below.
It's silly, but I'm jazzed that I glued magnets on my Heritage palette so it snaps right onto my easel set up. Just gotta dive in!
And oh yeah, Happy Valentines. --Tad