Oil Painting Self Portrait

Doing this for my color theory class. Made the canvas myself by buying canvas and stretcher bars. Its 36x36 with 1 inch squares gridded. First time I'm using oil for the whole project. Had little experience with oil before. Theres 1296 squares I need to paint. To be done with this by May 2nd (end of semester), I have to do about 5-6 lines a week.

I'm only using 5 colors: white, yellow, orange, red, blue. No black, green, brown, or any other colors. I'm mixing them myself. Also, its ALL oil. No mediums such as linseed oil or galkin, even tho I should use galkin to make the oil dry quicker.

- First picture is of course..picture of me with grid (9x9 with 1/4 squares) on it.
- Second picture is what I have done in 2 and a half hours in class. I only got 1 and a half lines done.
- Third picture is what I did at home after lugging it from school. I worked on it for about 3 hours with breaks. Without breaks, I probably spent about an hour and a half to 2 hours. I was slacking off and using the comp.

For the 2nd and 3rd pics, I included the grid and boxed off the areas in RED outline of the grid and canvas to show where I am and what I have painted. colors may be a little off from the actual painting due to lighting when taking the picture

Let me know what you think. Suggestions? Opinions? Critiques? I'll be posting more pics as the work progresses.

That's very cool, very Chuck Close. I love doing things with girds, I like the precision, but this is a bit much for me. I would murder my proffesor if they sprung something like this on me!

I did color theory before where I had to make a duplicate copy of a photo. I did this monkey in acryllic. But I didnt use a grid. I just traced the image, transfered it over to the empty side of the board and painted away. I thought my current class would be something similar to this, but after the teacher told me that each square will be different in color, I'm curious as to see how it will turn out.

I would still like my portrait to look exactly like the photo instead of stain glass like. But what can I do? Whatever teacher wants, student must do.

Worked more on it. I know I kinda messed up on the eyes and some of the colors but I'll try and work on it when I'm done with it and when I have time. Right now, I need to get atleast more then halfway down the canvas by April 11th