Sustained Investigation I

For this assignment, we were asked to create a work that was answered our sustained investigation inquiry question. My inquiry question is "How can I convey mental illness through art?" My initial idea was to do a portrait, one half of the face being normal, and the other half messed up and sort of blended out. The purpose of this was to show memory loss, which is related to mental illnesses like Alzheimers and Dementia. This piece is connected to my life because my great grandmother suffered with dementia for several years before passing.

The first step to creating this piece was taking a reference photo. I took a photo of Emily and printed it out, then drew an accurate sketch onto a piece of wood. The wood was previously painted with gesso mixed with a little bit of red and yellow acrylic. From there, I used oil paints to fill in the sketch, using about eight colors of different values and tones to make it as realistic as I could. I wanted to use oil paint because I'm not very comfortable with the medium, but my goal is to improve with using it. I also knew that oil paints blend very easily, which was in my favor, because it matched the effect I was going for with one side of the face. WhenI was finished with the normal half of the face, I layered the colors onto a palette knife and used vertical strokes to create my desired look. I allowed the painting to sit and dry for several days, as oil takes a long time to set.

Throughout this project, my piece did evolve. I had to be patient with my medium, as I'm not used to working with it. I also had to except the fact that it was not going to look as realistic as I had hoped, so I embraced the style that it was taking on. I think my next steps for this piece could be adding smaller details with acrylic paint or mixed media to make the piece even deeper in meaning and in material.