painting in the making

This project is a self portrait project where I'm taking a traditional painting and putting my self-portrait in it. When someone tells you to create a self-portrait, usually, the first thing you think of is rendering your face.  This doesn't always have to be the case.  It is a representation of yourself.  It could be an animal, it could be a collage of all different things, it doesn't have to look like you (after saying all that, mine probably will end up looking like me since that's what I'm going for).

The painting I'm using is Madame de Pompadour by Boucher. I figured that this is a very intricate piece and I could learn a lot about painting in general.  This is a very useful process and is teaching me about color mixing, and how to apply the paint.  It's also teaching me a lot about my own style of painting, although it doesn't show much when you have to render something exact. However, it makes you more aware of the individual decisions you make while painting future pieces.

I think I'm going to do collage work in the background of the piece, but very subtly. I'm also including my face, probably with a yankee hat or something and sneakers showing underneath my dress.

So if you're ever up for doing some painting exercises,  of course painting directly from observation is fantastic, but painting pieces from the masters can't hurt either.