S.I. #6

This is a portrait, or two, of my friend, Cody. My aim for this project was to add variation to my investigation by doing a portrait with the subject making a unique facial expression, so I pulled two pictures I had taken of Cody from my camera roll that were "different"- one where's he's making a face, and one that was taken at an upward angle. My inquiry question for my sustained investigation is: How can I use symbolism and background to reflect a person’s identity? When I think of Cody, I think of photography because it is a major passion of his. To incorporate this into his portrait, I decided to build off of the paper using old film strips from cameras my parents developed when my sisters and I were young.

I created this portrait using toned pastel paper, graphite, oil pastels, glue, and film strips. I chose to use toned pastel paper because I wanted to experiment with materials on a more textured paper, and with colors on a paper that isn't white. I used graphite for the left half of the artwork and found that it was difficult to create darker shades because of the paper's texture. The oil pastels worked easier on this paper, understandably. I used scissors to cut up the old film strips that have been sitting in our box of baby photos for years and glued them onto the paper creating a border.

Contrasting moods is the focus of this art piece— two different facial expressions, light and dark, and a switch of materials convey a switch in mood. This portrait was free-handed using reference photos that I took so looking at shape and form came into play to create the most accurate looking faces I could. I started with the left-hand face and worked over to the right. Using graphite on this paper was a struggle because the paper is so textured and the graphite doesn't always reach into every nook and cranny. This made blending and creating darker shades a greater challenge. The oil pastels, on the other hand, blended very nicely and created a smooth texture for his face. Quick, short movements using a bright yellow color makes the background look like it's shining onto Cody's face. This project evolved once the film strip was added because there was now a 3D interest added to the portrait and it almost looks as though is photos are in their own film strip. My next steps for this project could be to lengthen the "film strip" of faces to tell a story or capture many more emotions.