10. Signature Self Portrait

ARTIST STATEMENT:

The subject of this art piece is, as the assignment was to make a self portrait. I sat down in my bathroom one night, late into the night and took some selfies just for this project, and this was one of the ones I chose to use. The work was made using just paper, and pencil, and each little marking is made with my signature. So, I used my signature to shade everything, make every tiny little line. I choose to use the image I used because it was one of the best images I got, and it looked the best to me.

A couple composition rules used in this are a combination of soft and sharp focus. The soft focus can be seen in the background in the shadows, as they fade in and out on the wall behind me, creating a sense of depth. The sharp focus is seen on my face and on my shirt, as there are rather clear lines between where my shirt ends and where my skin starts, or where my lips are and aren't. The project didn't evolve much from the original concept. The only thing I really changed was on the top of the image, the grid I used to make this was still visible, so I had to shade extremely lightly to hide the gridding.

There isn't much story to this image, just me fooling around with my camera, sitting on the floor of my bathroom, which happens to be one of the only rooms available to me that has a white wall. Something I'd change if I were to revisit this project, is I'd go back in and make the eyes a little more even so it doesn't look like I have a black eye. I did have dark circles under my eyes in the original image, but not that bad.