These are general instructions for how to paint a self-portrait. You can use this as basic knowledge for your reference, but please do not copy them verbatim.

1) Draw yourself first! A good likeness will be difficult if you haven’t practiced drawing yourself before starting. Drawing “from your head” (without reference) is difficult because our sense of proportion and spatial awareness changes when we look at ourselves, and we can’t truly be objective about it.

1b) Background: Draw yourself in front of a mirror – you need good lighting to get the most accurate results! If you don’t want to draw in front of a mirror, take some photos (with flash) or use photoshop magic to get yourself into better light. You will get the best results if your “photograph” has similar lighting to that which you plan on painting with – i.e., avoid photographing yourself outside in bright sunlight if you plan on working with thin glazes because your features will be too thin for this method.

2) Draw yourself in front of a window with good lighting. This is almost essential if your photo isn’t lit by flash (or similar); it doesn’t have to be perfect daylight, just bright enough so that you don’t have to squint when looking at the drawing!

3) Tape some nice paper on some boards or something more substantial than cardboard. I use an illustration board about 2 cm thick and easy to tape on without disturbing too much of the sketch underneath – sturdy cardboard would probably do nicely, though.

4) Draw yourself on the paper, or trace your photo if you are using one. Make sure that you have enough room around your face! It’s easy to get carried away and draw yourself too small, which will result in an unnatural-looking image with a very small head – trust me, I’ve done it loads 🙂

5) Water down some acrylic paint so that it is transparent but still pigmented (some people call this “milk” consistency). Clean your brush thoroughly first to avoid spreading paint up your wrist and arm, which will result in streaks on the canvas.

6) Start by blocking in your hair quickly; you don’t need to define them perfectly because everyone’s hair looks different: block it out roughly with a mid-value color (you can darken or lighten this as necessary). You should not fill the whole panel with hair at once – paint some of it, then leave for a bit.

7) Block in skin tones next; I am using a darker tone here (light skin is often painted with lighter paint; more on this later). Again, you don’t need to be exact, and it’s better to get these basic shapes of color down before getting too detailed.

8) Start refining your features: eyes, nose, and mouth. You can add more paint on top if need be to give greater contrast between the colors on your face, but try not to add too much at once, or else it will start blending unnaturally – i.e., darken certain areas according to where shadows fall rather than just covering everything! I’ve made a marked change in lightness around my eye area, which isn’t quite correct – we’ll fix that later 🙂

9) If you can, leave your face for a while now! This is so important because it will give the paint time to dry and allow you to look back on things without getting frustrated or distorting your work with smudges 🙂 Add in hair details if necessary before continuing.

10) Block in basic tones next; it doesn’t matter exactly where they go just yet, because we will be refining that soon enough.

11) Start refining the tones using a damp brush to pick up some of the watered-down paint and move it around to where you want it. Don’t worry about wasteful brushes here – you can always use them for something else when you’ve finished! If you haven’t already, add lips and lip shading if necessary and fix any errors that need correcting (i.e., non-transparent patches in your skin or hair).

12) Now, we will work on blending everything properly by adding progressively lighter layers of paint (always remember: never add darker paint because this will make things look flat and unnatural). The idea is to gradually fade the edges of each color so that it all blends in.

13) Start with skin tones because these are usually very smooth surface areas that blend well together. Here I’ve blended out the edges where my face meets my hair by adding darker paint in small amounts – this should be done carefully because it’s very easy to go overboard and make things look messy.

14) Fix any errors now before moving on to the next stage, adding mid-tones. These slightly lighter tones will make everything look less flat and help blend your different colors more convincingly. Use a finer brush because it’s harder to blend with a larger one (you can switch back to the previous brush if need be).

15) Next comes shadow tones – these are applied in the same way as before, but this time use a very watered-down version of your base skin tone (tone it down more if necessary) and dab lighter bits of the paint on to form shadows.

16) You can probably see I’ve gone overboard with my shadow tones here – they need to be blended better along the jawline, etc.; don’t forget about those areas!

17) The last thing we’re going to do now is subtle highlights which will help give your painting a more sophisticated appearance. These are applied in the same way as before but using a lighter tone of your base skin color (tone it down if need be) and dabbing on very small amounts here and there to form highlights.