Self Portrait
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Process
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If I had to choose between sketching or painting I would pick sketching. I never liked painting. I knew this work would be a challenge for me. I never used such a big canvas before either. But I managed. The first thing I had to do was to stretch a canvas, the canvased measured 3 feet by 3 feet. After putting the pieces of wood together like a puzzle with a little help of my friends we stapled and hammered the canvas on to the frame. The next step was to gesso the whole canvas. After it dried for a few days later I took it home to work on it over Thanksgiving break. I had a very hard time deciding which artist would be inspiration. I was switching back and forth between Lichtenstein and René Magritte ( "The Pilgrim"). After finally deciding on Lichtenstein I begun my work. The first thing I did was put a coat of white paint before I did any sketching on it. The next thing was to sketch out with a pencil my face, hair etc.
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I enjoyed mixing colours on my palette, I even took some pictures of it. After doing the first part of my work, I begun to blend colours for my skin tone. I didn't find that hard at all.
The last part to my work was, painting all my facial features and finishing my background. First I decided on having white dots all over the red background, but after realizing it would take me many hours to complete I decided to stop doing them. At the end I left the white dots just at the top and painted them over in the places I had to. I like how it gave a sort of a 3D look and texture, because I didn't use a paintbrush for them but a nail polish design pen where it allows you to make perfect dots on you nail. The most difficult part for me was my nose. I could't get the right skin tine. It kept on going from really dark to really light. But after a long time of experimenting with different colours and much stress I finally got it done.
Collecting Pieces My classroom provided me with the canvas, wooden frames and gesso. I decided to do my painting at home so I went out and bought paints and some brushes.
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Reflection
Overall I think my self portrait did turn out pretty well. Being my first time doing something like this on canvas on a large scale. But there are some things I could improve for next time. One of them being learning more how to point a nose and how to get the right skin tone and shading. Also the parts on my face where there is shading around my mouth could be better mixed in.
Inspiration
My inspiration for this work is Roy Lichtenstein. Roy Lichtenstein was an American pop artist, during the 60's. He is widely known for his great comics. Two of his work pieces that inspired me were "M-Maybe" and the POP image.