Our most recent assignment which was just completed and critiqued yesterday was a self portrait. Now this really was delving into the world of painting! We had the opportunity to a couple of practice examples before making the main portrait. The format was very large and therefore quite intimidating. I guess you have to start somewhere so we started with a blank sheet of paper and then gave it a background cooler – which I chose light grey. After that it was a process of trying to make marks which when taken as a whole would create and image that looked a bit like me. I was struggling with blending the colors to create the various values, but I did remember from my previous drawing class that you can also create value by the density and type of marks that you apply – so I went down that route.
Background
Photo to use as template
Finished portrait. Again we went through that wonderful critique process and I felt that Torr did a great job of his critique. Elizabeth made the point with me and several others that it often times is better to work from a mirror image than from a photograph, and I fully accept that. The photo make the process a lot simpler but you can lose a lot on the way. I shared my self portrait with a friend I have known for more than 50 years, and he was worried for me because he felt I looked very sad. He knew I had been trough a few negative life events in the last couple of years and even suggested that we had a skype call. Ironically I felt anything but sad when I took the photo for the self portrait, It just seems to happen that with a combination of the bags under my eyes I inherited from my mum and the rather thin lips inside the beard which appeared turned down that’s the impression it gave off. Something to bear in mind for sure when looking at other portraits. .
Elizabeth chose who we were to give a personal critique to, and my subject was Geo’s self portrait, as her piece was next door to mine on the right. I’m still familiarizing myself with my fellow students and wasn’t sure who Geo was. Looking around I recognized her, but every time I had seen her before she had worn a headscarf and this had confused me for a moment. One of the features that I had particularly liked in Geo’s portrait was the expressive way she had shown her hair. Looking back on what I had just mentioned about my friend’s interpretation of my self portrait, in my critique I had also made observations of my interpretation pf the emotions displayed in the portrait, and of course I recognize that we can be completely wrong in our assumptions, but to my mind that is one of the joys of art – the creator throws their work out to the world and the world can interpret it in a million different ways. See my critique in the PDF below.
And guess what…. at the end of the class we were given our colors to start the next chapter with.