The assignment was to create a self portrait on a large piece of cardboard. We had to trace out values on our face and create a color scheme as well as a guiding question we kept in mind as we worked. As a class we had a guiding question we all followed which was “What unseen aspect of yourself will you make visible?” My personal question was  “What feeling can I create from my color palette” The title of my piece is “Resolute” because it means purposeful, determined, and unwavering which is how I’d like to come across in this painting. 

I wanted to create a feeling of groundedness , calmness and stability. I did this through the use of an earth tones palette, as well as using contrasting colors to express on balance. The elements and principles I focused on were color, value, shape, and contrast. Color, Value and contrast go hand in hand and I obviously had to focus on them because my guiding question was based around my color palette.  I used all acrylic paint for this portrait.

We started this assignment by taking our first round of photos, and after that we printed one and started tracing the values on our face using the clear plastic sheet we were given and tracing paper. We started messing around with color schemes in our notebook and on photoshop. Then we took our final photos, started drawing grid lines, started drawing the actual face, wrote our final plan, and started painting all while continuing to update the google slide presentation so that Aimee could see our progress.  

In this piece I’m trying to express, not how I see myself, but instead how I wish I were, grounded and optimistic. Through the use of color and facing forward I am trying to represent staying grounded, stable and strong. Earth tones, to me, represent this and by facing forward, because it shows you’re not turning  away. I do think, however, the pose would be more impactful if my eyes were looking directly towards the camera, but having my eyes up and off to the side is actually purposeful. The eyes are to represent optimism. Instead of dwelling on the mistakes of today I looked in the future and hope it’s better. I believe what is painting represents as a good general idea for this year as well it’s been a tough year we need to keep need to be strong and know it will not always be like this in the future will be brighter

I am proud of this piece, I think the values on the face specifically look really good. My color palette is not exactly what I wanted, it's more of a red and green contrast than neutrals but I still like it. In my final plan some of the colors were different from the final result. The lightness face value in my plan was very yellow and I changed that to a almost white gray light green because it fit with my theme better. I also changed all the black values to a dark shade of whichever color was  A big takeaway from this portrait assignment was to trust the process and believe that it will turn out okay, even if you hit some bumps along the way to accept and adapt.