Ugly Mug Mondays! #9 and #10

I kind of skipped last week's Ugly Mug Monday!. It was completely accidental, I swear. I was up late duking it out with the final drawing for my latest full scale illustration and by the time it occurred to me it was something like eight in the morning. Then I spent the past week wrestling said drawing into submission and before I knew it - POW! - it was time for a new week. So I did two portraits for this week, as a way to play catch up. This time 'round I tried working from photo reference instead of sitting in front of a mirror. I kind of felt it was cheating, as I usually (read: always) work from photos, but I stumbled across my senior portrait and couldn't resist.

Once upon a time I had an afro. I thought it was cool. What can I say? Also I have a gap in my teeth. It isn't nearly this bad, but i thought it was hilarious and just couldn't help but leave it. It was originally the center-line in the face and wound up being one of those happy accidents that end up making a picture just that much more whimsical and quirky.

I realized that with the exception of my first week's offering, all of the self-portraits in the Ugly Mug series have been in black and white. There are two reasons for this;

1. I look at things in terms of tone. The simplest way to do this is in black and white.

2. I only have three tubes of casein paint. Black. White. And red. As it would happen I've fallen in love with casein and I sort of naturally reach for them whenever it's time to paint my ugly mug.

That being said, someone once told me I was afraid of color. She was basing this on the fact that everything in my sketchbook was in black and white. Either pencil or pen and ink. I was taught fairly early on that "if it doesn't work in black and white, it isn't going to work in color" and "you choose a color for it's value". These are the two things I hear in the back of my mind whenever I'm painting. So a lot of the time yes, I do work in black and white, but I think it's ridiculous to say that I'm afraid of color. To prove it, I put some red in this one. Hope you like it.

As an aside I really like these two paintings. I think the economic use of brush strokes is pretty cool, and I'm quite fond of the purely implied expression - especially in the second one. I'm liking the direction these are heading in, I hope you good folks do too.