01/08/2026
This week our students dived into the deep end by attempting a task that even professional and seasoned artists find hard: self portraits.
It's a known fact that self portraits are so hard for artists mainly because of the pre-existing, fixed mental image we have of how our own face "should" look - which often do not hold up in reality, thus preventing us from seeing what is actually presented to our eyes. Not to mention the mixed bag of emotional vulnerability, self-criticism and shifting identity that also come into play.
So this week we find some of our artists dashing out of the door before we could take pictures of their works, while others called their portraits "awful", and some even vowed never to do self portrait again!
But all in all, when we look at it objectively, we must say all our artists have done incredibly well for they have achieved at least 70% likeness in most cases (if not more!) - at least we can tell who is who without looking at the signatures. Most importantly, something that is 'unique' about each individual shone through in all of these portraits.
This is a major win considering they only had a couple of hours to execute the work. To put it into perspective, even Portrait Artist of the Year gives artists all the time they need to work on their self portraits before submission (and at least 4 hours to paint someone else!) so our students are incredibly brave and have done well we must say!! ✨️
