sustained investigation #15

The final piece for my formal portfolio is another portrait in keeping with previous pieces. This piece was more an experiment because I had never done this type of style before. I had wanted to do something less standard and because of this I did the color blocked style. This piece was the continuation of me wanting to make weirder portraits.

This piece was done in acrylic on cardboard. This portrait was made using the same materials as my last three portraits. I used black and white to make most of the face, but I added some more detail on the face with two different shades of red that I mixed. The background is mostly white with two stripes of purple. I mixed a lighter shade of purple that I used as the top stripe above a darker stripe of purple.

I tried to use line in this portrait more than I had. I wanted to make the features of this portrait really high contrast and make it almost a more simplified face. I outlined the features and head in black lines to stand out from the white background. I wasn’t sure how my idea of the style I wanted to use would look so I did a few sketches to see generally what I wanted to do. From the sketches I just went straight to mycanvas and made up the face. Usually i have trouble with making a face believable and realistic, but because of the simpler style, I could just draw a face and not worry so much about it looking realistic. My next steps could be to add some pattern in the purple stripes. The strips look a little empty and I think a pattern would look really good in them.