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