Art Historical self portrait

For this project we were asked to do a lot of things. First we were asked to find a picture of ourselves that showed our faces and was around the size of an average mugshot. Meaning it was shoulders and up. We were then asked to use this picture to create a self portrait. And after, with that self portrait we used the research we did on an art movement or artist, we created a background inspired by the art movement of artist. The subject of my background to my self portrait is Orphism. Orphism is mostly just a bunch of different colorful circles all around each other to try to show as little white as possible. The materials that I used to create this project were a B and an HB pencil, a tortillon, and water color for the background.

For this project I used a lot of elements of art. For example, I used color, value, shape, line, and space. I believe I uses all these elements of art because I used color in the background when I was creating the orphism, I used value when I was drawing myself. This is because we were asked to use shading and not just lines to create facial features. I used shape with the background of this project, and I used line for the background as well. I also used line for the overall project. Finally I used space when I made myself not look flat, I created depth within the project. For this project I also used principles of design. For example I used balance, contrast, emphasis, pattern and unity. I believe I used these principles of design because I used balance to make the whole project look even and not lopsided, I used contrast when I created the different shades of gray, like light to dark, I used emphasis because for me my attention is brought right to the myself because I am the center of the picture and it's a different color from the background. I used pattern in the background when I was doing orphism and finally I used unity because I created a visually pleasing agreement among the elements within the design.

I don't really see a meaning behind the artwork, but for me I kind of see a sad but crazy and messy aspect. This project relates to my life because it is me that I was recreating. It also relates to myself because when I looked for meaning I saw that aspect of crazy and messy which I believe lives inside me. In this artwork I am proudest of the hair. This is because I used a different technique to get the highlights of my hair. What I did was created a stencil of different shaped lines and put it on the paper and began erasing on the hair within that stencil. I struggled a lot with the proportion of my facial features to the size of my head. I overcame these struggles by just looking at the picture and drawing what I saw. Something that bothers me with my project is the background. If i could revise this I would probably go back and try to make it neater.