sustained investigation #13

This portrait is of my uncle although because of the colors and how I chose to do the portrait it is difficult to see the resemblance. My reference for the portrait was a photo that was taken by my mom while my uncle was in college. Everything from the subject to the photo reference has some relation to me through them being parts of my family. I have a personal connection to this through my family.

This project was done very similarly to my sustained investigation #11. I used acrylic paint on the cardboard backing of a pad of watercolor paper. I sketched everything out first in graphite and then began mixing my shades of blue to fill in. I used a straight blue, black, and white to make every shade on the portrait. I used a stiff piece of cardboard as my surface to paint. I took the cardboard from an empty pad of watercolor paper.

Color was the main element used to create this portrait. Color was used to show the shapes and values that make up the face and hair. I did use some pattern in the background with the repeating and overlapping boxes. I again had some trouble with finding the correct size and shape of the mouth and nose with my sketch. I am happy with the final product but it is not exactly true to the photo. My next steps could be to add more layers to the face. I think more layers would make each section more distinct and clean up the entire portrait significantly.