Drawing Proj 3: Fragmented Self Portrait

must be “fragments” or just an abstract portrait, cause one of the ones don showed is just incomplete + the palette testing thing ? like what if i just obscure part of my face with stuff. ANS: CAN

PREP WORK BY WEEK 10

  1. Research (artist influence, how)
  2. Concept Write-up (100 word on concept)
  3. Concept Sketches and Thumbnails  (8-10sketches, idea, composition, value, design)

ARTIST INFLUENCE:

 Masato_tsuchiya
  • Isolated areas of colour draw more attention to those areas
  • Black and white smokey effect

 

   sarsar
  • Fluidity (curvy lines surrounding some of the faces)
  • Smooth transition/placement of the different faces
  • Using overlay method with faces from different perspectives- smooth fragmentation (compared to harsh geometric one)
  • Focus on facial features (especially eyes)
  • In the third picture, feels like there’s a narrative- taking a mask off or something

 

   esrarois
  • Breaking down the hand? (similar to aykutmaykut)

 

 Willeys_art 
  • Fluidity! (organic motion lines similar to sarsar)
  • The body in motion (even face)
  • Playing with positive and negative space. Doesn’t show the entire body, but the mind pictures it on our own. Is the body disappearing or reappearing?

 

     Akutmaykut
  • Fluidity!! (for the third time hehe)
  • Love the idea of the portrait turning into smoke
  • Or cutting up the face to reveal something else inside

 

       Taylurk  
  • masking effect
  • I like the idea of different forms being contained in one bigger shape (and some parts of the form breaking that boundary)
  • And its like some of the silhouettes look like a human body shape and the stuff inside has hands or face positioned at where it shld be, but in a wrong perspective. (like fourth pic the looks like 2 people hugging)
 Justin Bower
  • cool glitch effects
  • sort of like how you loose control of your own life / our over-reliance on technology
 Kittisak Thapkoa
  • Macabre-ness
  • Mass of writhing arms and heads
  STAIRS
A section of prepwork I did on stairs in my prev coursework. MC Eschers famous stairs!! 
Illusionistic stairs could be part of my work...

CONCEPT WRITEUP:    what do the fragments represent?

  1. More akutmaykut x sarsar kind. Blurry smokey feels, because thats what I feel about myself and my personal identity.
    1. Maybe like the idea of peeling off my mask (like in sarsars one). Mask is a smiling face, then once peeled off is a emotionless face or scream or distorted face with multiple eyes? Im ugly/suffering inside
  2. More taylurk kind. Overall silhouette is a upside down head, then inside is the confusing fragments- How my mind is always so complicated to me, and I confuse myself. But maybe arms or some fragments trying to break out-> me trying to escape from my own mind, to find liberation or help.
  3. Exploded self portrait (like akutmaykut) then inside is a rotten apple core or twisted apple. im rotten to the core
  4. dance?

100 WORD WRITE-UP : I really dont know what to write aish. I draw first

8-10 CONCEPT SKETCHES AND THUMBNAILS:

  sry 
vv messy (and ugly) rough ideas you probably wont be able to get hahaha

(idea chosen to build upon mentioned below)

 


100 WORD WRITE-UP Update: After consult#1 with Don

Decided to work upon the silhouette idea x fluid organic fragments. So the overall shape will be a head, and the fragments will be inside-> How everything is contained in my own head. But then there will be some parts where arms will slightly break out of the boundary of some white fragments –> me trying to escape from my own mind, to find liberation or help. The demarcation of fragments will be shown through white smokey lines that flow inside the head, and some will link out of the head and around (maybe then these can be black). Overall feel should be somewhat cloudy, like shrouded in mystery–> reflecting how i see myself in 2 ways: 1) I feel like my personal identity is very hazy to me, I cant directly say who I am/what kind of a person am I (I feel like I dont have a definite shape, thus the use of  smokey mysterious vibe) and  2) From 2D “My line is emo” mark making, I realised that I tend to make much more organic works and lines (instead of hard geometric lines, hence I wont be doing like mirror fragmentation), I am more for organic fluidity whoo. As for the different fragments, I was thinking of having an increase in the expression of the faces from top to bottom? Like The faces gradually look more pained/intense –> 1) Sleepy/Dreary closed eyes, 2) blank stare, 3) screaming –> Like waking up and realising you are trapped in a nightmare –> Labyrinth of my mind that drives me insane –> optional objects to put in the composition could be stairs, like MC Eschers. Conclusion: Me trapped in my mind aaaaaaa.

“How will we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering?’

“You  spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.’
― John Green, Looking for Alaska



PREP WORK BY WEEK 11

  1. Staged portraits, print + experiment
  2. Medium test
  3. Experimentation (compositions, tonal, medium studies / drawing techniques researched)


IMAGE INQUIRING
( cue the cringe oh god)
(I shall not post my picS HAHAHA)

MEDIUM TEST x PRACTICE TECHNIQUES

    Charcoal + Graphite tests

 

COMPOSITION

   Trying to compose 5 fragments  [rejected ugly composition:  yikes]

 

ARTIST REF 2.0 

      elfandiary 
Very stylistic organic lines, play with positive and negative space. Depth !!!

WEEK 11 CONSULT
Use graphite -> smoother gradient and more delicate feels.
Maybe can use the unraveling parts to form another face so those parts are not wasted



 

PROCESS: 3 DAYS OMg :((((

Actually didnt properly plan the smoke, because I thought I would go with the flow. And make not only the final work a self portrait, but also the process- because I’m the kind of person that will make plans, but then not end up following through exactly, instead I prefer doing what I am currently feeling!! I also thought that overplanning the smoke might make it loose its organicness and fluidity?? Like it wont be natural mmz…

 Started with the face first, and because the space around was white, the shading of the face looked okay. But then I later on coloured 8B for the hair (which i didnt take a picture), and the hair was so flat it just looked like a hole + it was so dark it made the face look like I didnt shade it at all CRIES ;n; So I had to lighten the hair a lottt, and add highlights + shadows 

I think the bottom part was the hardest because I wasnt sure how to nicely tie everything together. In the end, when I had this hole left to fill, I had to use photoshop in planning out the smoke. It was like a jigsaw puzzle so hard:((


 

FINAL SUBMISSION INFORMATION

ARTWORK DETAILS
Medium: Graphite drawing
Size: A2

FINAL CONCEPT: 
With the project being “FRAGMENTED self portrait”, I knew I didn’t want it to be geometric. As that would be the usual interpretation, and because I felt like geometric shapes were not a good representation of me.  From 2D “My line is emo” mark making, I realised that I tend to make much more organic works and lines (instead of hard geometric lines, hence I wont be doing like mirror fragmentation), I am more for organic fluidity!! And with “self portrait”, I feel like my personal identity is very hazy to me, I cant directly say who I am/what kind of a person am I, I feel like I dont have a definite shape or identity. Its kind of like a grey area to me.  Hence, I decided to use smoke as my fragments in this project. So the overall composition will be a big head, suggesting how everything is in my own head. And then there will be smoke around my head, with some parts of myself becoming the smoke itself, showing how I think of my self identity as smoke that you just cant quite grasp. As for the faces, I wanted the middle one to be staring directly at the viewer, because I felt like it would make the viewer more connected to my self portrait. I also wanted to make it unsettling, with how she stares at you wherever you go, much like how I closely scrutinize and judge myself harshly:”)

FINAL:

 

COMMENTS

  1. I think i took too much time because I spent 3 days on this and the end result was quite underwhelming. Honestly, I liked my can drawing much much better. I think being the compulsive blender I am,  I put too much time into over-rendering and fussing about small details that are hard to see from afar. Even though I did consider and look at a bigger picture, I think I still could’ve made it even more impactful from afar and cut down on details
  2. I thought composing the smoke would be easy because I could come up with whatever I wanted, but that made things even harder. Because I had white + black smoke and the dark hair + light face, I had to carefully compose the smoke so that all these 4 parts would nicely balance out. If one part was too white, without blacks or vice versa, it would draw too much attention away. So tonal planning was actually really important for me. Also, I had to ensure that the smoke was organic enough, and flowed nicely. The style of the smoke also had to stay too consistent- there were times when I realised i made the bends/ends of the smoke too rounded, instead of slightly pointy, thus making it look different from what i drew before and weird. Variation of the different shapes and widths of smoke was hardddd. Never underestimate drawing smoke is what I learnt.
  3. I think some parts had slightly weird proportions. Like my forehead looked quite big and made me look bald even though I drew so much hair. So I decided to cover the forehead with bangs. Also I’m not sure why but initially, the distance between the eyes and nose of the staring portrait looked quite far apart (2nd proccess pic), so I extended the grey smoke in the middle of them, to obscure the distance a bit (final drawing pic), and I think it fixed the problem quite nicely!! HA the art of obscuring to cover up problems:”)
  4. Not enough contrast!!!!!!!! I used normal graphite and tended to blend quite a bit, so the tonal change was very subtle, especially for parts like the face. From afar, it really looked like I didnt even render it and was super disappointing!!:((((( I needed even blacker darks to create more contrast and dramatic lighting, to make my portrait take on a more dimensional form. The face shading needs to be reworked on and darkened. One face could even be darker than the other for even clearer distinction between the two 
  5. Other improvements included: Making more hair turn into smoke. Blending the smoke into the hair even more (though I already tried, I think some parts the value edges too sharp?). Making the smoke less white, so only some parts would be highlighted and so it looked even more 3-dimensional like it was going around the hair. Making most of the smoke darker would also push it back into my hair more, and make the whole painting less overwhelming? Because i think right now its a bit too much to take in all at once sighs… maybe I should’ve made the composition of the portrait smaller so there would be more breathing space for the viewer, if not i think it feels a bit too messy now:( ??

OK LA BUT I THINK ish not bad i guess:v I tried quite hard:”””)

FOUNDATION DRAWING SEM 1 PEACE OUT!!!!!!!! I will miss it, i think i did improve:”””)