Today I started my final project -Assignment 3 for the Painting 1, Part 3 course.
We were required to do a portrait or self portrait in oils or acrylic. We were particularly required to “explore some of the endless possibilities for arrangements in portraiture by looking at work of other artists….”, paying attention how important is the background or interior depicted, how paints are handled and the brushwork. We were required to make notes in our learning log, they can be found below after the information about some artists and their artworks we like and style which is appealing to us.
Project 1. Self Portrait.
I decided to make a self portrait using oils and acrylics. I naturally tend to work in illustrative genre and I am a big fan of Gustav Klimt art because of it ` s high, magical and unique aesthetics, bright and elegant colours in his paintings together with a warm emotion of love and tenderness – what make his art for me as one of my favourite ones. Below is my self portrait:
Artists.
While I was doing my research on contemporary portraitists I found a female artist Laura Brevner (Canada) who`s style may be is also inspired by Gustav Klimt. She uses mixed media such as oils, acrylic, Japanese paper, gold, silver band copper leaves, resin and wood. Below I put some of her paintings named from left to right.
”Mai” -2018; “AMA”; “Iris”, 2015;
Working through the course I realised that I am more interested in painting female and children`s portraits, I like abstract, complex backgrounds and I am less interested in depicting interiors and drawing or painting figures in interiors.
The works of Gustav Klimt I like in particular (images via www. Gustav-Klimt.com):
“ Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer I”, 1907, ; “The Three Ages of Woman, 1905;
Kano School of painting
The Kano school of painters – the most important and distinguished painting tradition in Japan was established in the late fifteen century by Kano Masanobu ( 1434-1530). In my learning blog there are 2 separate post about the Kano school dated 13.11.2017 and one of the prominent artist of Kano School – Kano Eitoku dated 21.02.2018. It was interesting to discover at some point that Gustav Klimt was also very impressed by this traditional Japanese art and his golden backgrounds and gold details were inspired by the artworks of Japanese artists.
Below is the description of my creative process and photos of my progress while I was doing the self portrait.
I was sure about the background right from the beginning and I used Acrylic paint of 3 shades, below on the photo. First I pencilled the overall shape of my head and facial features. I had to experiment and mix a lot of paint to establish a right colour for the complexion. I also used a make-up trick applying a lighter shade on T zone to create more dimension on the face. To bring out more of my personality I painted some of Qazaq ornaments on the background and a branch of jasmin flowers.
Project 2. A Boy.
I also did another portrait for my final project as for the Assignment 3. Since I tend to do female portraits I decided to push myself forward and work on a male portrait.
I decided to paint a portrait of 12 years old boy who was enjoying his bowl of sweet cereals. I did this portrait in oils on paper for oil painting.
Below is description of the process and photos of my progress while doing this project.
I started with pencilling facial features on the paper. The first drawing came out completely wrong, it is in the center on the first row of photos below, so I had to develop another image with my pencil working more precisely on overall proportions of the facial features. On the first draft I placed boy`s eye too high, leaving little space for his forehead and hair, also I placed the bowl right under his chin what was not good for the whole image. On the second draft I moved the bowl to the left what gave me space for the head and bright more harmony into the image. Then I started rot mix colours for his face tone colour. I watched some tutorials on Youtube before. One of the most helpful ones was a tutorial “Oil Painting Tips” from Daria Callie;
For the facial flesh skin tone I mixed titanium white, Alizarin Crimson lake extra, old Holland yellow medium, Teint Vleeckeur – all four from Old Holland classic oil colours by KC Driebergen NL; brillian yellow and Gold Ocker from BLOCKX;
It took a while for me to decide with the colour of the background. While taking photos of the image which was coming out with my IPhone camera, I tried different filters and that was actually very helpful. I put below different backgrounds I tried as well as white and black version of the portrait. Filters are a good tool in the creative process which help you to think and understand better what are you aiming for and how tho reach your goal. It was interesting to observe how the background can change a whole perception from the portrait. I find the black background as the one which makes the face older. That was why I opted for a clean blue background to bring out the childhood age in the portrait.
JeanArt 