Mash Up Self Portraits

Left: Self portrait aged fourteen. Right: Self portrait years later.

This is the self portrait (above left) when I was fourteen that made me want to revisit the self portrait theme. Unfortunately, none of the drawings I’ve done over the past few weeks, particularly the ones in pencil, have been anything like as good. So I decided to draw a new portrait (above right) using the 14 year old one as a template so the two drawings would fit on top of each other, and the two painted glass heads that followed would show my face in two different time periods. I didn’t labour over the glass painting too much and made a few versions before I got a pair of heads that matched up to good effect (below).

Left: Two layers of head encircled by painted scraps. Right: Self portrait two 270 x 270mm.

In the finished square panel (above right) I had fun with the leading. A lead line loops out of the side of the head to form a background and shoulders made of glass scraps from two recent samples in my favourite colour, which has always been yellow. I put the youthful head on top of the older one so the hollows and wrinkles are less prominent, making me wonder whether I should get a fringe cut again.

Detail of self portrait two

Left: Four self portrait drawings on top of each other. Right: First version of self portrait three

The idea for self portrait three was to paint two quick heads and then combine the best parts into one by chopping them up. I had a pile of drawings of me in the same position (leaning anxiously into the mirror) to copy from (above left) and an idea for a background of wavy lines on top of a roughly painted section. This plan (above right) didn’t really work, the piece had a sombre, anxious appearance so I decided to do some more chopping and introduce coloured scraps to enliven the piece.

Self portrait three 265 x 475mm.

Detail of self portrait three

Self portrait number three was supposed to be the last one, but I still had half heads left from the last two portraits. So I shoved these bits together to make another head, combining it with an old vibrant green sample for the background to make a tiny mash up portrait. It felt as if I was finding a way to make the self portrait more light hearted, getting away from the intense stare of an artist looking at herself in the mirror.

Mash up self portrait 160 x 180mm

Self Portrait Lockdown Challenge

As we went in to lockdown two months ago I had a few self motivated (as opposed to commissioned) projects I wanted to work on. One was to tackle the self portrait. The new drawings I did seemed less competent than the ones I’d done as a teenager, but still I thought I’d use one as the template for some glass painting - something I think I have got better at over the years. I worked away adding and scraping back the black iron oxide paint before putting the glass in the kiln overnight at least four evenings running. One (below left) was more painterly, the other (below right) was more scratchy and I looked horrendous in both of them - well I was recovering from illness at the time.

Glass self portraits, each approx 230mm square

However, when I put one piece on top of the other, there was an amazing transformation as someone that looked a bit like me, which neither of the pieces did on their own, emerged. I kept it in the window for a while, as I checked that I really did like it.

One self portrait on top of the other

I also knew that I wanted to do something with these pieces and that I would ruin some quality they had in the process. The panel I made (below) was my second attempt. In the first I had tried unsuccessfully to extend the painting beyond the head shape. Here I kept the extra painting to a neat hairstyle beyond the lead line round the head on fragments of grey painted glass, similar in tone to the face. I used coloured pieces of old samples for borders, all this in 6mm glass to match the thickness of the double head.

Glass Self Portrait I

This self portrait only works from the front, with the scratchily painted glass on top. Viewed from the back (below right) with the more painterly glass portrait on top, the illusion that it looks a bit like me disappears and one eye dominates. Difficult, unsettling and surprisingly nerve-racking to make public, the glass self portrait is something I’ll continue doing.

Left: Head surrounded by (high heart) lead Right: Head viewed from the back