Gridded Self Portrait

This assignment was to do a gridded self portrait with graphite that showed a full range of value, and then to fill the background in based on an artist or art movement. For my background I chose to use oil pastels, but we could have used whatever material we wanted.

This piece was mostly an assessment of value, which was shown through the gridded self portrait. The self portrait part went pretty smoothly, but deciding on what I wanted to draw for the background was hard.

The background had a mix of meaning and just common elements of Frida's paintings. The painted herself outside a lot (and often with blue skies). I drew the crows because I brought an entire book in for this project and I refused to waste my efforts. Frida also worked a lot with flowers, so I knew I wanted to use that, I just had to pick what kind. I ended up picking violets because historically women would present them to a girl they admired (in a gay way) to express sapphic affection, and if I were in any way romantic I could do that, but for now I'll just express my gayness through flowers on paper. I struggled with using symbolism, as I don't like symbolism. If I did this project again I would work more on making this piece surreal.