We had to write a letter to a friend about our two self portraits.



Terneuzen 29-11-10

Dear Evi

I am writing this letter to you because I want to tell you something about my two self portraits. We have painted two self portraits in Art class. We had to paint them in style of Vincent Van Gogh. There is a copy of my two paintings attached to this letter. We had to show two different kinds of expressions. They had to show you, how you see yourself. We had 4 lessons to finish the paintings. But I am not so fast, so I used the 7th period on Friday. Because I finish the sixth period it was possible. I will talk about the paintings now.

I will first tell you about the left painting. I wanted to show sadness, and confusion. I chose the colour dark green with a little bit of brown for the background. The dark colours already give an expression which shows sadness. I used complementary colours for the t-shirt. Because that is one of the characteristics of Van Gogh-Style. There are a couple of ways I used to express sadness. I used dark colours in the background to give it sad look. The corners of my mouth are slightly down. My eyes are big and I painted my eyebrows up a little. Which makes me look confused and sad. I tried to paint shadows with a little bit of green. I didn't use a lot of green because I was frightened that it would be too much. When I see my painting now, I would have used more shadows. I used the brush strokes the most in the background. But I had to use them in the face more when I look at my painting now. It was not so difficult to paint this expression. Because my parents divorced three years ago. And I will always remember what I felt when they told me. So I used that to paint the sad expression.

Now I will tell you about the right painting. It shows a surprising and happy expression. Because it shows happiness, I used light colours in the background. I mixed white, yellow and red. I used the complementary colour green for my t-shirt. I used a brighter colour for my lips. And my eyes are less wide than in the sad painting. I painted my skin colour less bright to draw the attention to my mouth and my eyes. I tried to use more brush strokes in my face, but I did not succeed in that. Although I think the shadow in my neck and at the right side of my face. I do not like the shadows around my nose, the shadow is too visible. And the colours in the background do not flow over smoothly. But that is because I did that background in two lessons, I could not get the right colour back the second lesson. This expression was more difficult for me to paint. Because I struggled with my mouth, I had some problems with the colours.

There are many differences and some similarities in the two paintings. The biggest difference is of course the background. But that was the assignment so that is obvious. If you talk about the expression, there are some differences. My eyes are bigger and have a sad expression in them on the left painting. The right one is more neutral. The only similarities are my shirt, my hair and my neck.



I am happy with the results. Especially because I am not that good at drawing normally. The expressions are visible and the colours are good. The brush strokes were good in the background, but not so good in my face. I liked the lessons a lot and I am really pleased with my mark.

See you soon Evi!
Your friend Carmen