Artist Inspired Background

Salvador Dali (1904-1989)

This assignment was inspired by and artist or art movement we learned about in class. It was all about trying to create a background for our self portrait inspired by their works. In the first assignment we drew a picture of our self using grid lines and transferring the shades and darkness and "sculpting our face from the paper." Then we picked an artist who inspired us. We were instructed to create a background similar to their works or inspired by it. I chose Salvador Dali for my background and created a surreal image with squid flying in the air around my head and a caravan crossing my vast expanse of hair. I also created the "dream-scape" Dali was fond of using with cliffs and gradient in his style of work.

This assignments was all about color for me. As Dali used bright almost fauvistic color choices in his works. Another big aspect was balance. I worked hard creating a balance between the self portrait and and the background that's why I used colored pencil instead of drawing.

A big challenge was getting the squid and background right. I just one time drew the squid with red pencil and just hoped for the best as I knew I couldn't erase it. I am most proud of the squid's' body shape as I have never even drawn them before. However I wish I had made the background more of a sunset colored gradient. The reason being I think the squid look like there underwater which was not what I was going for.