Symbolic Self Portrait 28-09-12 + Evaluation

Yesterday was officially our last day to work on our painting, and what a hectic day it was. I started the lesson by painting the t-shirt. I chose to paint it in an orangey yellow, something that went very well with the rest of the picture. It was not meant to be symbolic, but when I look back i can clearly see that it is the same colours as the Angolan national shirt. This is symbolises me as I have lived in Angola for several years. When this was done I went over to paint the eyes and mouth. The results were okay, but the colours (especially for the mouth) where slightly off. I wanted to do something about it, but due to time constraints this was not possible =( . In the last of the minutes I painted a few minor details, as well as painting white dots on the 'seigmann' in order to get a sparkly feel to it. The results overall were good, even if there were several things I would have liked to changed. This will however be explained in the evaluation section.

This is my painting...

Evaluation

The following section will explain and evaluate my work. It will explain how it links to Picasso (artist that I looked at during this unit), the good aspects, the bad aspects and the aspects I would like to improve for next time.

How did the painting link to your chosen artist?

There are several ways in how thispainting is linked to Pablo Piccaso. The most obvious is the boldness and the characteristics getting shown throughout the picture. Like Piccaso I tried to make my markant features to stand out, especially on the shadowing. This has been both a succsess and a failure (explained in respective sections). I have also tried to add my markant feutures, which I think I good at; this was seen when Katharina and Adrian said the face realy looked like me.

What was succsesfull?

I think the resemblance and my personality coming through were the best aspects in this painting. Like stated in the previous paragraphs, the shaddowing created a near resemblance to my face. The painting was also very accurate and had all of my main feutures in a correct fasion. My personality coming through was also positive, due to the 'seigmann' being smooth and clear. I think the 'seigmann' was a good idea since it overall represents me (happy, smiley and active). I also like the colourfullnes.

What was unsuccsesfull?

My major concern with the painting was the nose and the shadwing around it. To sum the nose up, it was not well done with shadowing at the wrong places, downgrading the artwork as a whole. With more time I would have changed a few of the colours (the purple of the background could have been darker and my lips greyer).

What would I like to improve for next time?

 For the next time I would like to do something similar, except but more weight on the use of color. I would also use another technique when creating the nose, due to the result in the artwork bellow :-( . If possible I could have added a few more hidden symbols around the artpiece. There are two other aspects I would change, both of the mbeing comment from class members. The first one i that i would have liked to remove the white background areas, since this attracts the viewer, something which I do not want the background to do. The seccond aspect comes from a Mirre comment, where she stated that she thinks the picture was hard to paint and shadow, due to the lighting of the picture. This is completely true and a better picture could have made my 'unsuccsesfull' aspects less obvious.

When this is said, compared with the factor of time, I am allround happy with the result and would rate the artwork a 7.5/10.

Symbolic Self Portrait 13-09-12

In todays lesson I continued with what I did  in the previous. I set myself a goal which was the be finish with the seigmann and the background (the big spaces), so that I can focus on the face in the next lesson. This goal was reached since I managed to finish both goals.

In the begginin I started with the seigmann, but after further thinking I started with the background before finishing the 'seigmann', so that I could compare the colours with the background. When this was done there was one major problem, the background purple was much lighter than what I intended, so I added blue to even it up. Overall I am happy with the progress so far. The background colour style is slightly similar to picassos, quite bold but still has a nice and representaive aspect aboutit. I was also happy with the 'seigmann', especially the different shades of red which makes it look well made...

For the next lesson I will have to start creating the face, something which will probably be the hardest task yet. Hopefully it will be good.

Symbolic Self Portrait 06-09-12

In Today's lesson I continued to work on my sketch, as well as creating a carbon copy of my psinting onto the canvas. In the beggining of the lesson I continued with my sketch, especially with the eye and the mouth. I think this went very well, especially the aspects of expressing my personality. This was one of the aspects I would try to use from Picassos drawings that I did in one of the previous entries. Overall I was really happy with the sketch... The quality was good.

Here is a picture of my sketch during the carbon copying technique stage.

The seccond part of the lesson was to copy the sketch onto the canvas. using carbon copying. The technique is bassed on coping the outlines of drawings onto a canvas or other sheet of paper. Ths is done by dracing over the outlines of the drawing onto the other sheet of paper, with the original drawing having carbon on the back. The copy of the drawing was very accurate and good, and I was very happy with the result.

During the last part of the lesson I decided to start painting the seigmann. The results were good, especially colour wise. In the next lessons I will have to continue with my painting and continue to work in the standards that I have done so far. One aspect I will have to be carefull about is the quality of my painting; this is something I have been very bad at before. Bellow you have a picture of the partially finsihed seigmann.

Here you have the start of my painting. 

The remaining parts of the seigmann will be in a darker/lighter red/orange.