Digital self portrait

Self portrait assignment

For this piece I chose the art style "post impressionism" mostly in Van Goghs style of art.
The artistic choices I made to create this style was using the "broken colour technique" which is what most impressionists artists use to create texture and colour within their pieces. I used short very textured brush strokes to create a layered effect and used a brighter colour scale.
To create this piece I first got a friend to take a couple of pictures of myself using a butterfly lighting style- which is most flattering for taking portraits. Once we took an unnecessary amount of pictures I sifted through them and choose the one I thought was the most flattering. I then put the photo in photo shop and started playing around with my colours and brushes. It took me a while to start getting into the hang of things but I soon decided on a textured brush to be the main star of my piece. I created a layer over top of my portrait and started by colouring in the face, then another layer for the hair, another for the eyes and the clothes and so on. Once everything was a solid colour closest to the original portrait I created lighter or darker versions of the original colours and then made quick short brushstrokes across the solid colours to get the broken effect. Once I was satisfied I added a gradient background and cropped the picture down to as square as possible.
In the end I wasn't every satisfied with how my portrait turned out, my friends say I look sort of "burnt" I whish I could have made some of the colours a little more subtle and had kept some more "humanly" aspects within the portrait.