Process: First of all, I had to build my canvas. My canvas was 3 ft. by 3 ft. and I had to gather the frames of the canvas, the sheet, hammer, and staple gun. After the canvas was built, gesso was applied on the canvas to make it stiff. Then my picture was projected on the canvas, so it can be redrawn on the canvas. When the picture was on the canvas, I went over some of my features and corrected them. The sketch became finalized, hence I began to paint. I started out by applying an olive green base coat on my canvas. I mixed colors such as green, yellow, red and orange to receive the results that I did. It resembled the background of Still Life: Flask, Glass, and Jug, but more colors had to blended with it, hence I left that for later. During my experimental stage, the face was painted with a very light skin tone and it didn't resemble the shading and shadows in The desperate Man or the Girl with the pearl Earrings. Due to that, I began to incorporate darker hues on my face such as the combination of brown and white along with a speck of yellow. On the other part of the face I had colors such as orange, brown, and pink to add a realistic touch to the cheeks. There were shadows below my chin, to shape it's structure and I extended the shadows all the way down to the neck, so represent my theme of sexism, which appeared to be somber. After the face was done, I added some shade to the forehead using similar colors presented in the cheeks. I lightened my nostrils with the use of white and I also worked with white on the area above the and below the lips, so there could be a light source. The nose's structure was presented through the outlines that were made, by blending black and white together. I covered the eyelashes by painting black over them and making the black appear as eyeliner. When the face looked more realistic with all the shadows, the hair had to be completed. Considering that, I started the hair by extending waves from it, by curving my brush at some points and making it travel in a zigzag direction. Colors such as brown, black, and white were used to create the hair. That added to tension, which the theme required and resembled the hair presented in The Desperate Man. Some shadows of the hair were worked on the forehead, so there's a sense of unity in my portrait. Once the hair and face were done, the outfit needed to be worked on. The Girl with the Pearl Earrings had an outfit that was a light olive color with stains of darker colors. I used a similar color trend for the collar of my clothes by blending the olive green color with yellow and the brown with a little bit of white. I used The Bridge as an inspiration due to colors that were shown in the piece. I made swatches of all sorts of colors like, red,blue, green, and yellow and blended all of them out. Those colors added a stain to base color of the jacket, which was blue and that was how the clothing of The Girl with Pearl earrings was demonstrated. The lips were also similar to the ones in the Girl with the Pearl Earrings, because they were red with a mix of white. Once the my face, hair, and clothes were finished, I worked on the background. The differentiation of shades presented in Still Life: Flask, Glass, and Jug, really made me follow a the same trend. I blended colors such as red, orange, green, and white to really make the somberness pop out. All those colors created an eerie atmosphere and my theme required that, because I was all alone and needed someone to guide to overcome sexism. Reflection: Painting the Self-portrait was a very challenging journey for me. The reason this statement can be made is, because I was never amazing at painting, but knew the basics that it required. The struggles that I faced, while doing this painting was blending the skin tone with the shadows. I was scared to blend the darker colors onto face, because I felt that it'll ruin the face and my face seemed very 2 dimensional because of that. Once I started blending dark colors on my face, the bone structure became more apparent, but at times my face would becomes too dark and the paints would dry out quickly, which made it harder to lighten the face up. Another thing that I struggled with was painting the nose. At times it seemed too cartoon like, so I had to practice different blending techniques to not make it look as fake as it did. Colors such as black, orange, yellow, and white were used to give the nose value and shades. At times the colors would spread to the forehead and I had to repaint the head, which lead to that portion becoming extremely delicate. The paints were too wet and I couldn't blend them out, hence I had to wait a whole day to compose that portion. When the jaw line of the face was being constructed it resembled a double chin. That element was difficult for me to fix, because I couldn't figure out the size of my chin and how round it should've been. Due to that the neck wasn't relevant and I had to fix it through black and white to add shade below the chin, to separate it from the neck. That was a hectic process as the colors weren't flowing well and after a continuation of tries I got better results. Some things that went well included the composition of hair. I was very efficient at forming the curves in my hair, because they all flowed smoothly and went in the respective directions they needed to go in. Also, when it came to painting the clothes, it was easy for me, because I was blending all colors into one and was actually just waiting for a surprise. It turned out very nice. Some improvements that I would consider for the future is to always keep value in my mind and always add some shadows to the face to begin with, so I don't have start the painting over and over again. I should paint on separate board or paper to learn from my mistakes, rather than painting on the canvas right away. ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY: 1. Courbet, G. (1970, January 01). The Desperate Man (Self-Portrait), 1843 - 1845 - Gustave Courbet. Retrieved November 26, 2017, from https://www.wikiart.org/en/gustave-courbet/the-desperate-man-self-portrait-1845 2. Post Impressionism. (n.d.). Retrieved November 26, 2017, from https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/movement/post-impressionism 3. The Bridge. (n.d.). Retrieved November 26, 2017, from http://www.theartscouncil.org/artwork/the-bridge/ 4. Girl with a Pearl Earring. (2017, November 07). Retrieved November 26, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_with_a_Pearl_Earring |
PROCESS (EXPERIMENTATION) Many pictures were taken, before the self-portrait was worked on. In the very first picture, I was looking deeply in the sky and the eyes were quite relevant, because whenever someone saw the picture, they asked me where I was looking. That made my theme stronger, because I wanted to display sexism through my eyes. Also, the features were well defined just like the features on the man in Courbet's work called The Desperate Man. After deciding on the picture that I wanted, I began to think about the ways in which the hair could be depicted. Since the man in The Desperate Man had wavy hair, I wanted that element in my hair, as the waves can be symbolic towards tension. When I painted the hair, I didn't like the way they turned out, hence I gave myself bangs and it looked worse, as shown in the third picture. Sense the Man's hair in The Desperate Man was open, I decided to manipulate my hair style. Considering that aspect, I took some pictures with my hair open to see the appearance of the waves in my hair. After having done so I changed the hair style, by painting over it and examining the waves in my actual hair. I decided to work on my face. I gave my face base of a light skin colors, without any shadows, which indicated that I wasn't following the techniques applied by my inspirations. The Girl with the Pearl earrings had a pinkish tone in her cheeks with shadows and the same aspect needed to be depicted in my piece.The eye lashes weren't realistic and didn't seem to fit in with the works of the artists that I was using, as most them were from post impressionism. I had to add more shadows to display my bone structure and some source of light to present value. When I evaluated my piece, I began painting some more to make sure the shadows and value were coming in to play. There shouldn't be one flat color on my face or neck, as that isn't what was embedded in post impressionism and in my major inspirations such as The Desperate Man and the Girl with the Pearl Earrings. Pictures of Process: ACT RESPONSES: 1. Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationships between your inspiration and its effect upon your art work? Gustave Courbet had a lot of shadows in his painting called The Desperate Man and I also incorporated a variation of shades on my face. The shades made the man's bone structure apparent in The Desperate Man, just like they shades did to my self-portrait. 2. What is the overall approach (point of view) the author ( from your research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration? When I researched the Still Life: Flask, Glass, and Jug the author didn't really have an opinion regarding the topic of my inspiration. The reason being is, only the painting, its name, and the information of the author was presented. This reveals, that the author wasn't very interested towards being in depth, when it came to the painting, because they had nothing else written. 3.hat kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration? I have realized that Gustave Courbet was passionate about reality, as his artwork presented things that weren't peculiar. This demonstrates that he was not an imaginative person who was embedded in dreams, he cared about facts and depicted them with the best of his ability in his art. 4.What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research? The central idea was to highlight the depression that was caused from sexism. Females are looking for support and if they speak up, their voices are ignored, because the definition of sexism isn't being understood. 5.What kind of inferences (conclusions reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning) did you make while reading your research? The inferences that I made were, that people don't find sexism as a concern, because it might not concern them. What they don't understand is the fact, that it is causing troubles to life of specific genders such as females. This statement can be made, because females want someone who doesn't have a fixed mindset and can assist them towards overcoming sexism. |