In my own time, I paint self portraits every few months to practice portrait paintings and to explore different ways to capture a person. Oftentimes, I capture people in candid poses that aren’t superficial or extremely staged. Currently with portraits, I tend to illustrate myself or someone else and how they tend to appear in daily life or in their alone time. This pose that I chose to depict myself doing is of me putting up my hair and looking forward, as if I’m looking at my reflection and getting ready. I wanted to have gestural brushstrokes and heavy application of paint to show a free way of working with paint. With my paintings I experiment with heavy values and vibrant colors against less saturated colors, and I also combine a very realistic approach and simple linework to suggest what is there in a space.