My Portrait Process
On the first day of working on my artwork, I contoured my face highlights and shadows. I found it quite hard to differentiate between some of the shadows and to estimate where my head or shoulders would be.
2. On the next day, I transferred it onto another piece of paper using carbon paper. It was quite hard keeping the paper in place and making sure everything was transferred well.
3. After that, I transferred my face onto the pieces of cardboard. I also used different light and dark colours to create contour and highlights. This can help to give my cardboard portriat more depth and contrast.
4. I pasted the cutouts on my cardboard face. Even though I didn't take photos of it, I also added another shade of brown so that my shadows can also pop out more. I found it difficult to place the cutouts properly since some of them could not fit well.
5. The next step after completing my face was to do my hair. The hair part consists of the hair backing and the main hair. First, I measured those two parts and went to cut them out. This cutting was really difficult since the hair part is in a curved shape.
6. The next lesson, I began pasting some scrap piece of cardboard I had to mimic strands in my hair. I also managed to get a few textured pieces of cardboard which helped to build up depth in my hair. I especially enjoyed making my fringe since it was made out of many pieces of different cardboard.
7. Next, with both of those pieces done, I went to glue them together. Now, I created my final face and I was really satisfied since it looked really good.
8. Next lesson, it was time to work on the final piece of my cardboard portrait. I brought some Makisan to create my clothing. Since these colours and patterns were very bold and bright, I researched online for some designs. I then decided on this striped pattern.
9. For the next two lessons, I worked on this. I also decided to use some extra pieces of the packaging to make some buttons and a pocket to add some extra formality to the clothing. I like how the white managed to make the shirt more clean and also made the colours pop out more.
10. After this, I went onto using velcro to connect my face and suit together to create my final completed portrait.
Overall, I am really proud of my final portrait and I feel like I did better than expected. At first, I thought that this project would be really fast and easy. However, once I started, I realised that there were many parts that needed to be taken into account for. For example, I needed to cut out and plan the different layers of my art. My favourite part of the art was creating the hair since I liked mixing and matching different pieces of cardboard together to create an unique and cohesive hair.
In reflecting, I think that I could have improved on my time management. If I had not spent that much time on the hair and face, I would have created an extra set of hair or clothing for my art. I also hope that next time I could have more creativity when creating this art. When I looked at my classmates portraits, some of them had really funny and striking hair. Even though this time I went for something safer, I hope in the future I can think a little out of the box.