100 Days 100 Paintings

Self Portrait a la Rembrandt: Painting #46.

I bet you didn’t expect this!

I haven’t done a self portrait in eons, and since Rembrandt did about 40 million of them – all in different garb, facial expressions, hats – I thought I’d spoof the new one they just found with him heaving his head back laughing by painting my own head instead of his.

The image here is rather dark, making it look very coarse – it was really difficult to get the subtleties in the browns and background to come across right digitally.

I didn’t quite get the same facial expression, but I’m blown away by how close I got to some of the details – the shiny leather collar, the soft leather jacket with the arm bent around his back, the wool blanket he had wrapped around himself….

I added a soft silky scarf, though, because in his self-portrait his long hair surrounded his collar, and my short hair made the neck look very vulnerable and bare. I also added the hat, since he always had hats on in his self portraits. For a painting that only took a few hours, I’m pretty pleased!

Oh, and I finally figured out why he wore that hard leather collar!

He wore capes that had these chains that ran from one side to the other to hold them on. The collar protected his clothes from getting torn or tarnished by the chain!

Here are the 2 paintings I used as inspiration – one for the hat, the other for the body, posture, clothes, background….

ORIGINAL: Get the 9″ x 12″ original painting of Self Portrait a la Rembrandt through my shop at Etsy.com: go here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/angelatreatlyon

PRINTS & GICLEES: And if you miss getting the original of Self Portrait a la Rembrandt, get a fantastic, high-quality print of it here: http://bit.ly/Rembrandt-Spoof-Prints.