oil painting round 1

I always loved painting with acrylics but i found myself always getting frustrated with how quickly they dried and how difficult it was to blend the paints together.  When i was introduced to oil paints i fell in LOVE. the oils were so smooth and the colors where bright and seemed to be popping out of the page.  Before i began working on a real project with oil paints i knew i wanted to do a profile, i loved the skin colors that oil paints made and i knew i wanted to work with those more.  But i wanted to make the profile interesting so i decided to take a picture of myself looking into the camera with one hand stretching out the skin on the right side of my face.
Then i got to work!
I started with the skin mapping out the peaks and valleys on the cheecks, lips, and nose. Doing this was difficult because i knew i was trying to distort the face, but i still wanted it to be proportional.
Then i painted the hair, i wanted the hair to be darker to put more focus on the face, so that was pretty easy.

Then then i moved onto the fingers...
I usually LOVE painting hands but for some reason the angle threw me off, no matter how hard i tried i was never happy with how it looked.  The oils began to mud together and i was getting frustrated. As my frustration began to build the steadiness in my hand began to decrease. and before i knew it the hand i was drawing looked like spaghetti noodles.  But i liked how the hand didn't necessarily look real, so i built off of that, added more lights and pushing the darks until the fingers looked distorted and elongated in a very frighting way.
For the background i wanted a deep forrest green and mrs rossie suggested i add highlights of a slightly lighter green.

This painting has kind of a double meaning to me. In a way it shows that if your not careful the the vices that are inside you (such as anxieties, fears, depression, pride, self loathing, ect...) will overtake you, and become who you are.  If you are filled with fear and you let it control your life you (in a way) become fear. You let fear consume you and now you are just a part of it, you have lost yourself. 

But if you take your vices you can make them into something beautiful, something that makes you stronger and you can be conqueror over it. You can be in control of your fears or your pride and it can become a part of you that is beautiful, like the right side of the woman's face.

It all depends on your choice and determination. Because the vice will always be there, we just decide whether it will become a part of us, or all of us.