ArtistsNetwork.com 21in the back mirror will be visible to
you in the front mirror next to your
easel. Unlike a straight-on view, you
won’t have to constantly readjust your
head position as you paint or draw.
LIGHT SOURCE
There are many considerations
involved in working with one mirror,
let alone two or more, but all of them
are easily resolvable. The primary
challenge is finding a good position
for the light source. I usually place my
light well above the height of the easel
and slightly to my side. This creates
the shadow patterns I want without
too much light flaring into my eyes. It
also illuminates my painting or draw-
ing enough for me to work. If needed,
I’ll sometimes bounce a supplemen-
tal fill light off the ceiling or wall to
illuminate my work surface further.
When the primary light source
reflects too brightly off of one of the
mirrors, as it often does, and bleaches
out the shadow side of my face, I just
place a piece of paper over the section
of the mirror that’s reflecting the light.
EYE-LEVEL DISTORTION
It’s important to pay special attention
to the tilt of both mirrors. Even a slight
tilt one way or the other can greatly
increase the amount of glare bouncing
into your eyes from the side. While
this will be immediately obvious and
simple to correct, another by-product
of an overly tilted mirror may not.
Any mirror tilt, however minor, also
will introduce visual distortion. This
distortion may work for or against
your artistic goals, but it’s something
that you should try to catch early on
and consciously control. You can cre-
ate some interesting psychological and
visual eye-level effects by angling one
of the mirrors downward or upward,
or by placing the mirrors high or low
to your angle of sight.
When purposely changing your
eye-level view, keep in mind that
every time you adjust your mirror’s
picture plane, you’re also distorting
your own personal picture plane.
Inadvertently angling your mirror a
little too much laterally to the right or
left can cause your face to look abnor-
mally narrow, and if you’re working
with two poorly manufactured mir-
rors, the results could look as if your
reflection is from a funhouse mirror.LIKENESS
Using two mirrors resolves one prob-
lem of likeness not usually considered
by most people, including some artists.
Because every person’s face is at leastslightly asymmetri-
cal, with one eye
possibly larger than
the other, one eye-
brow arching higher
than the other or a
hairline sloping to
one side, the view
you see while looking
into a single mirror
for a self-portrait
isn’t the view of your
face that other people see. It’s actually
the reverse view.
Viewing yourself reflected through
two mirrors gives you the opportunity
to see and depict yourself as others
see you, sometimes making the like-
ness truer to the outside viewer.PREP
If you’ve never worked with two
mirrors, you’ll find the setup process
is much easier to understand and put
into practice than it may sound here.
No matter how many times I imple-
ment it, however, I find that it’s
important to allow adequate time for
the setup, perhaps even the day before,
to position the lights and mirror to my
liking and get the pose I want.
Any type of self-portrait, straight on
or from the side, will be challenging.
You don’t want to feel flustered or
pressed for time before you even start.Dan Gheno teaches at the Art Students
League of New York and formerly
taught at the National Academy
Museum and School, in New York City.
He’s a professor emeritus of the Lyme
Academy College of Fine Arts, in Old
Lyme, Conn., and is the author of Figure
Drawing Master Class: Lessons in Life
Drawing (North Light Books, 2015).
Visit his website at dangheno.net.I use lines a great deal
in my painting process,
as in Self-Portrait, Fall
2018 (oil on canvas, 9x12),
and while I try not to
completely eliminate them
as I reach toward a fi nish,
I do try to integrate them
into the bigger color/value
masses with a lost-and-
found approach.