Self-portrait Rembrandt' style

Texto postado no fórum que originou essa idéia (www.pixelbrush.net):

*****WARING - big story with bad english ahead*****

I'm a lucky guy. I live in a big city that has a museum with a original Rembrandt Self Portrait ( I 'm trying to find a picture of this painting online, but I don't know the exact name or year...). But I didn't know that until the day I went to the MASP museum to see another exposition, French Impressionists I guess. I love Impressioninsm too, but when I was walking around the place I saw in a distant wall a very familiar face.

I went right trought the room and stoped in front the yellow line on the floor, in front of my ol budy Rembrandt. As I'm a tall guy, i could stand with my feet above the yellow line but my nose could be 5cm from the canvas. Acctually it's a wood plate, pretty heavy one, it's a little bent, the time is restless. Of course, the security guard asked me to not get that close. I never touched the painting, for respect, but I couldn't resist being 2 metters away and he kept looking at me for almost a half-hour.

About Rembrandt's painting, it's amazing how simple the brush strokes are, he used very little oil and the wood texture is visible in some parts away from the face. From a certain distance, the light illusion is better than a photografy, but with no distance at all, the brush strokes are fresh and simple.

There isn't too much color, just hints of oil...it's a very monochromatic pallete, as the light was his subject. Of course, HE was the real subject and this makes think why he did so many self-portraits. I belive it was for practicing and to have a good 'portfolio' to get comissions. If there wasn't any model avaliable, the mirror would always be there.

**********************

Enough blah blah, I started this weeks ago and I wasn't sure if it would work. I wanted to paint a classic portrait (or classical portrait, wich on is correct?!?!) in Rembrandt style, with a candle light source, lot's of dark shadows and bright light on the face. I shot several pictures of myself with a camera, no flash, it took me some time to get a picture i liked. I such at photografy. Anyway, I'm only using these pictures as reference, to get the proportions and general drawing / composition right. Since last "session" I started to use a mirror and the same light. Boy that's a change, I'm tired of just copying photos!

For the painting i didn't wanted to paint myself in old costumes because I think that a self-portrait serves as a record of the time that the artist painted it. So i posed like Rembrandt did a few times with his tools in hands, but i changed the camera angle, the tools and costumes. It's the clothes I use everyday (the jacket only when it's cold haah), and the tools I use to paint.

What you'll see here may look simple but It took me a lot of time so far.. the initial sketch was the hardest part , I had to keep it simple yet correct.. I 'm trying to learn something from the old masters and something I see a lot are the straight lines in construction drawings.. I first started with the general silhuette, using straight lines. Then I looked for the major shadow shapes and outline them, then the features.

I belive I got a "blurry likeness" so far, thing that tells me that I'm in the right path. Now I only need to refine things, corret that eye and the big nose (that's realistic, I do have a big potato nose). But the motivation is up, I know I can finish it, so now I can post. I hadn't before but I know the rules and saved as many progress files as I could.

PLEASE, LET ME KNOW IF THE IMAGES LOOK TOO DARK, I'm painting in a Mac notebook wich has the brightest screen I ever seen, there it looks great but in the PC screen at work looks dark and lost lot's of textures and detail...