S.I. #8

The focus of this portrait is love. I was feeling particularly happy and in love and in the moment thought: this is what I want to show in my art, this happy, excited feeling— and was then inspired to created themed portraits regarding emotions. When visualizing what love feels like in my head, I see sunshine and sparkles and warmth and smiles, so these are aspects that I worked into this portrait.

I made this portrait by painting with acrylic paint on bristol paper and using Mod Podge to glue on painted and cut-out flowers from a coloring book I own called, The Secret Garden by Johanna Basford. I started with a Blick graphite pencil to sketch out the face, then used painter's tape to mark off the border. Using a large flat brush, I laid down a pink background, then painted the head and facial features using smaller, rounded and angled brushes. I finally painted the flowers in the book, then, once dry, cut and adhered them to the portrait.

As aforementioned, the process of creating this portrait began with an intense feeling that sparked inspiration. I began by brainstorming tangible concepts that I could use to convey the idea/feeling in my artwork. When I got to work, I started by sketching out a face, looking in a mirror to use my own as a reference. However, I only used this method for the eyes and nose because I found that it was difficult to hold a lovestruck expression while trying to take it down, and it was starting to look disproportionate, so for the remainder of the face, I took a picture of my mouth in the expression I wanted and used that for reference instead. I am not an avid painter, so when painting this portrait I experimented with how I can mix different colors to create a range of skin tones, brush styles and strokes, and layering and blending with the paint itself. Where the edges of the face meet the background, I wanted to create a blurred effect to convey the dazed fuzzy feelings of love, so I experimented here using a bit of water with the paint to make it look more cloudy and blend together better with the surrounding colors rather than sitting on top of them.

When I was originally mapping out the cutouts around the girl's face, I planned for there to be two other sections of single or double stemmed purple flowers, but when assembling, I felt that the purple clashed with the color-scheme and drew too much focus away from the portrait, so I X'ed them.