An Artist’s Self Portrait

Posted by on Jun 28, 2015 in Blog, Opine, Recent Work | 2 Comments

DW Portrait Detail 1There comes a time or two in every artist’s life where he or she needs to create a self portrait. In many ways a self portrait is really the hardest thing to do as there is so much added pressure to represent yourself in a way that makes you happy. Problem is, as an artist you are not only your worst critic but you are naturally going to be much more critical of yourself and how you look. Unfortunately you simply do not see yourself as others see you. Ever hear and audio recording of yourself and think “OMG! Do I really sound like that?”. A portrait for an artist is very much the same phenomenon.

Reason I decided to do this is I was asked to create a series of portraits of the creative team at Works Design Group. Being part of said creative team I also had to do myself. I will share the others shortly.DW Portrait Detail 2

This was actually the second version of my portrait which I completed. Knowing a self portrait was going to be the hardest on top of the fact that I was trying a new technique, I did mine first really as an experiment to see if it was a viable option in leu of typical photographs.

While I was initially very happy with it I continued to refine the technique and get better at it as I finished the rest of the team which consisted of seven other people… and a dog. By the time I got to the end and looked back at my original portrait I felt it was not as good as where I ended up. So I decided to do another one.

Since I was doing it all over again, I wanted to come up with something out of the ordinary conceptually.  I suppose the concept behind it is somewhat obvious and does not need a while lot of explaining. Artist drawing himself and not yet complete. While the idea was original to me I did discover upon doing some digging on the internet that I was not the first to have this same idea. Normally I will shy away from doing it at that point but in this case I figured what the Hell? It is a portrait of me and that in and of itself makes it unique.

The style is certainly influenced by my favorite artist Drew Struzan.

So, without further adieu, here is… me!

David E Wilkinson Self Portrait

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2 Comments

  1. Ann
    June 9, 2016

    Hi,
    I like portraits and have done some,
    🙂

    I ‘m wondering if you’ve tried the Saatchi art site and if so, what did you think ?

    Thanks,
    🙂

    Reply
    • David
      June 10, 2016

      Can’t say that I have ever used them unfortunately.

      Dave

      Reply

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