Self-Portrait in Blue

Self-Portrait in Blue
Originally uploaded by randubnick.

I just finished reading a book about melancholy in English literature, so I thought this would be an appropriate image to post today, even though it is just the painting that is blue, not the artist herself. I painted this a few years ago as an early assignment in a portrait painting class, which was to paint a self-portrait using only one color. I think this painting is more successful as a painting than as a portrait. (Does it look like me? Maybe some.) Notice the intensely pained expression, which is due not to melancholy but to the stress of being both artist and model simultaneously.