Bit more progress on this selfie

Got to spend a few hours on this today. I mainly tightened up the features, the eyes , nose , and the mouth. Then it looked kind of weird with only those features being sharp and in focus so I had to polish a bit on the surrounding areas to balance it out. 

I’m observing myself pretty close up to the mirror so I can see the sharp details and pores of skin. I intend to make this portrait pretty tight as my goal is just to duplicate and copy best as I can. I always had trouble with the concept of simplification taught in schools always telling me to simplify or compress this and that and not to over-model. It’s good stuff too but never really worked for me personally for what I’m after with my paintings. Like anything else in painting, I don’t really like to make things deliberate so I prefer to keep simplifications natural instead of trying to simplify or look for simplifications then refine that simplification or design. My painting would be a simplified version of the live subject anyway no matter how tight I copy, and if there is time limitation such as an alla prima piece done in one sitting, it would end up being naturally very simplified if one works from big to small. 

A lot of technical things comes up in my mind as I paint even though I try not to think about them and just enjoy the tv show I’m watching while painting. So I think I’ll start writing about them later here on my blog. 

TV show I’m watching, “Jewel in the Palace” is about this character who dedicates her life to the crafts of culinary art and gets into a lot of technical things such as ingredients and cooking methods which has been inspirational for this painting process