Second painting ever in acrylic

This is my second painting ever completed and I wish to hear the thoughts of some pros on my self portrait and areas in which I could improve my technique. I am very new to painting and find the quick drying of these paints to be quite irritating, but perhaps that is due to my lack of knowledge.

Your correspondence is anticipated and appreciated

Elijah

Acrylic on artboard, 16"x20"

[Leslie Ficcaglia]

This is excellent for a brand-new painter, Elijah. I presume that you've sketched before but just not used color, or are you totally new to art itself? You certainly did a great job with the shape of the face and some of the shadows in the skin. The hair needs more depth and texture, especially on the chin and brows, but I don't think I could have done as well with acrylic, which seems hard to use and rather unforgiving to me. Oil's my medium and you can lay something down and then mess around with it if you choose. Anyway, congratulations.

Thank you for your comments, and in response, you are correct in the presumption that I have sketched before and that this is my first venture with color. I agree with your assessment of the hair, but all the attempts that I made to highlight it or give it some sort of texture seemed quite contrived, so I ended up covering them up. I see all these wonderful examples on this Forum and am quite intimidated by them. But I hope that putting myself out here will enable me to learn more about proper technique. I plan to experiment with oils but find them to be rather pricey for me to use regularly; perhaps they will improve my work enough that I could afford myself the luxury.

Thanks again,
Elijah

[Leslie Ficcaglia]

Elijah,

Take a look at how some of the other artists tackle hair to get some ideas. Paint is all an illusion anyway: an effort to make two dimensions mimic three. So there are conventions that people follow. It sometimes helps to ignore the specific item that you're painting and just look at general shapes and colors. This quote from Monet has always been really helpful for me: "When you go out to paint, try to forgot what objects you have before you ... merely think here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you." Otherwise expectations and prior experience take over and you end up painting what you think is there rather than what's really there.

Re: supplies, I live in a very rural area and get all my supplies through mail order. Some of the companies like Jerry's or Cheap Joe's have very good prices, especially if you hit their sales. Also, a lot of oil painters use very limited palettes (I'm not one of them, but that's because I was taught by someone who used a lot of specialized colors), so you may not need many tubes to start experimenting. On the other hand, people do paint marvelous portraits and tackle skin tones and gradations beautifully with acrylics; I'm not one of those either!

Lots of luck and keep painting!