Art Historical Self Portrait

In this assignment, we were told to draw a self-portrait of ourselves with the background inspired by an artist of our choice. First, we chose a picture of ourselves that we generally liked and had a range of all shades of grey. Then, we converted it into a black and white picture and printed an 8X10 picture of it. We went on to griding it, 1 inch by 1 inch, and did the same on the bigger piece of paper, and then started drawing. After we completed our self-portrait, we did art research on a specific movement or artist that we were inspired by, and made a mini research slideshow on it. Then, we drew our background using the same style or technique that our person or movement did. With my art, I was inspired by an artist named Frank Stella who did a lot of abstract, minimal pieces and printmaking, which is where I came up with my geometric pattern in the back. For my piece, I used granite pencils and colored pencil for the background.

In my drawing, I used elements such as space and texture. Clearly, space is a big part of my background, but especially my self-portrait, and most definitely my face. Spacing in places of my face was crucial since that's what makes people so unique, and recognizable. Without careful planning, my self-portrait would have looked nothing like me. Texture is also very important when creating a photo-realistic drawing since it can show depth and material. I used this throughout my drawing shown basically everywhere. Specific places include the shading on the side of my arms to show dimension, and my hair to show a contrast between the light blond and the darker blond. Some Principles of design I used included contrast and pattern. One specific area where I used contrast was near the top of my dress, the distinct use of dark gey next to light grey, and also shading is my face and neck used to define my features and to also show lighting and definition. It's pretty clear were I used pattern, and that's in the background of my self-portrait where I used a repetitive geometric pattern to really bring together my piece. Besides the fact that at first, I wanted to use a different picture of me, nothing dramatically changed in my piece.

Although there's no specific "story" to this drawing, I do like to think that the background of my drawing relates to my life. This is because I really love the black triangle pattern in the background with the very light contrast from light green to light purple. Those are my favorite colors (black and blue), and the triangle pattern looks complicated but is quite simple. I really love how my eyes turned out. Although it did take me thirty minutes plus to do both, I really think it was worth it. I also love how my nose and hair turned out. When I first started the project, I for sure thought my nose was going to be the hardest part since there are no real "lines", but it was one of the easiest. Which brings me to my next point, what did I struggle with? Believe it or not, my mouth was probably the hardest thing to draw since it's very technical and even if you change one thing about it like the slightest angle or the location, it can ruin the whole expression. After many attempts, I finally came out with a mouth that satisfied me, and looks the most realistic. If I could go back to make it stronger or better, I would probably add more shading to my face, and possibly make both of my eyes slightly smaller. But overall, I am very happy with how my piece turned out.