Oil Pastel Color Study

The subject of this artwork is a bald man that is smiling strangely at the audience, that I got out of a magazine. The setting is the plain, orange background that surrounds him. This work was made by first cutting out the picture that I wanted from a magazine; then using the grid method, I went square by square adding a little of each color that I saw until I got a (relatively) even mixture of all of them together. For this project all I used was oil pastels. I chose to recreate this picture because in the initial testing I figured out that I wasn't very good at blending the pastels together, so I picked a more simple picture. Also, I liked the brighter colors that were in this picture. The elements and principles that I used were color: the piece was made in very bright colors, and focused on the blending of them; value: in the different shades of the colors that were involved; and emphasis: this was important because to do this you have to emphasize how much of one color goes in each square.

I don't know what the composition rules or techniques are, so if I did use them then they are somewhere in there. My project didn't evolve much through the whole process of making it because after oil pastel is down on the paper you cannot do too much to change where it is or what it looks like.

The meaning behind this artwork is not much other than a good introduction to oil pastels: I have not ever really used it because it always seemed like a mess waiting happen, so this helped me "dip my toes" into the use of this medium. This project doesn't relate to my life much because it is of a random guy that I found in a magazine. If I could revise my artwork in any way, I would find a way to blend the oil pastel a bit better (being my first time I couldn't really figure it out). Also, I feel like this could be stronger if I used a smaller sized square, so that I captured more detail in the final product.