Portraiture Technology Create

After researching about mixed media portraits and creating some designs of my picture, I finally started working on the create process. First and foremost, I drew a sketch of my picture using a projector. It was very easy and convenient way to draw a picture because if I didn’t use the projector, it would take a long time to draw as similar as possible to the original picture on a bigger sized paper. The one problem was that if someone moved the projector tray, it was very hard to put it back to its original spot. So sometimes, it was hard for me to draw exactly same to the original altered picture. However, I don’t think it would be a big problem. After that, I searched for some good materials in order to decorate the portrait.

At first I could not come up with good ideas, so I randomly picked up some materials that belonged to Ms. Sudra and thought about how I should use them. Then suddenly I thought it would be a good idea to relate my picture with animals. I love every kind of animals and my future job is a veterinarian so I can express my feelings and my goal on a portrait using animal-related materials. I found a tie with penguin patterns on it and I cut the tie cloth into several small pieces. I was going to combine the cloth and some hand-drawn patterns; however, later I changed my plan. I found an animal pattern and printed it out on different colored paper. I cut them into equal sized rectangles and pasted them in order to make my shirt look stripped. I liked my new idea because if I used my original idea, there was a risk that my portrait might look messy since I might draw patterns unorganized.

The edges of the shirt are not straight but ripped-off. They represent that I have a wild and crazy characteristics deep inside my mind. Also, they show that I want to get out of stereotypes. If the edges were straight, it probably meant that I’m trapped in different types of stereotypes. However, by ripping off the edges, I could show that I don’t want to be stereotyped and have my own uniqueness.

I used two types of noodles for my hair. The yellow, thick one is spaghetti noodles and white, thin one is Korean noodles. I broke them into several pieces and pasted on the portrait. At first the pieces were very small, but I realized it would take forever to finish and I used longer ones later. The reasons that I used noodles as one of my materials are that first of all, I love eating noodles. I love every type of noodles whether they are boiled, fried. Spaghetti is one of my favorite foods and I wanted to tell others that I like having spaghetti. Also, noodles show that I’m Asian since many Asian people consume noodles for their meals.

My original plan for the hair was to color it into another color after I finished pasting. Nonetheless, I canceled this plan because if I colored the hair, I don’t think it would be able to show the characteristics of noodles very well.

Because I spent so much time to work on my hair, I worked at home to finish my portrait. At home, I colored my hands, face and the background. To color my hands, I only used a black marker. I wanted to give a contrast of white and black with some patterns. I really like using markers to draw an artwork and I thought this would be an opportunity to use them.
On the left hand, there are lots of medical devices such as stethoscope, syringes and surgical knife. On the right hand, there are different languages such as Korean, Japanese and Chinese, some books and mathematical symbols. These hands show the future and the present. The left hand shows my future as a veterinarian. This is why I put lots of surgical materials to show that I want to be a vet as well as I’m ready to achieve my goal. The right hand shows the present. I learn languages and other subjects at school and I enjoy my school life.

After I added some shadows on hands, they look sort of scary, but I really liked when I was working on this process. After I finished coloring the hands, I realized that some of fingers that are overlaid could be a bridge that relates present and the future.

When I was done with hands, I worked on coloring my face. I used different tones of green color oil pastels. I like oil pastels because I like the effects when they are combined together with other colors and they are one of my favorite medium. I chose green colors because they make people’s mind to be peaceful and calm and they are colors of nature. These colors also represent that I am a part of the nature.

Before I started working on the portrait, I outlined parts that are darker than rest of the parts. This helped me a lot when I was coloring the face. I was able to figure out easily which part needed to be light or dark. I started coloring using lighter tones of green colors such as lime green or light green. Then I put some darker green colors and smudged those colors together. The colors created a nice gradation and I was very satisfied with them. A problem was that I traced the picture lines too dark, and I was not able to cover it with bright oil pastels. For example, the highlighted part on my nose is colored with yellow; however, I was not able to hide the outline and I ended up leaving it like that.

When I was done with the portrait, I was very pleased with the result of it. At first, I was a little bit worried about failing because I did not have any good ideas to create this large artwork. However, as soon as I found the medium, I started to enjoy a lot and time flew in every art class. I did my best to create this portrait and I thought the portrait reflected my personality very well. I was able to have an opportunity to know more about me. When I was thinking of materials to use, I had to ask myself many questions about me. For example, I needed to ask what my favorite colors are, what my hobbies are and what I would like to do after I grew up. Some questions were simple while others were difficult to answer and I was supposed to have a lot of time trying to think about me.

Another aspect I was able to learn was that every material around us can be an artistic material as well. Spaghetti noodles were not just for cooking for me. It was a material to decorate my portrait as well as a matter to connect the portrait and myself in reality. I deeply realized that these materials were able to show the depth of the art as well. They were able to create shades and give 3-dimensional images to people.

If I were going to do this project again, first of all, I might try a different pose rather than covering my eyes. Maybe I might show my eyes and make another facial expression. I definitely would try other medium to create my portrait. I could make a collage of animal pictures and paste them on my hair. I could try using rice next time as well. My original plan was to put rice particles onto the portrait so to make it look like it’s snowing. However, I canceled that idea because I thought the picture would get too complicated and messy. So next time, I probably could try using this material.

The hardest part about this project for me was choosing appropriate materials. To be honest, I’m not a creative type of person and I needed to think a lot in order to come up with unique ideas. However, I think it was a good chance to improve my creativity as well as my drawing skills. The easiest part was coloring my face with oil pastels. I used oil pastels several times before and now I’m pretty used to utilizing this media. Therefore, it tool less time for me to work on it. Recently I bought some oil pastels so materials were easy to get as well. Comparing with using acrylic paints and pasting noodle pieces, oil pastel was much more convenient and easier.

I think technology was a tool for me to achieve more creative work because without technology’s help, I would not be able to come up with many designs. It would take a long time to draw designs by hand. The photo altering program ‘picnik.com’ was a great help for me to create such unique design. I was able to brainstorm lots of ideas by altering my picture from there. Furthermore, with the internet’s help, I was able to learn about mixed-media artists and their artworks. This helped me to get an idea of mixed media for my portrait. Without the internet, I wouldn’t be able to know about mixed-media artworks because I didn’t have enough knowledge about it and I do not have books about mixed-media at home.

The whole process took about two weeks to complete. For me, two weeks were not a short time period; however, I enjoyed every moment when I was working on my portrait. During this project, I got some advices from Ms. Sudra about materials that I could use for my portrait. Thanks to her, I was able to come up with better ideas through her help and advices.

Compared to others’ work, the biggest difference was that my portrait doesn’t have eyes. However, I think this makes my portrait to be more unique and creative. Some students used various medium for their portraits. In some way they look crazy and improvising, but they represented their characteristics very well. It’s hard to say that which portrait is the best one because everyone’s portrait represents their own personalities and traits they contain. Therefore, I would prefer saying that all the portraits were created very well.

Overall, portraiture technology unit was very fun and interesting. I really enjoyed working on creating the actual self-portrait. I’m also very satisfied with my artwork. If our class is going to work on this project again, I’m sure that I would love to participate in it!

Portraiture Technology Design

Reviewing my design specification

• Multimedia(If the photo is suitable to be drawn with mixed medium)
  
• Technology (Picture should be altered using technological devices before drawing)
  Photo of self, no one else
  
• Express self (It should represent me)
  
• Portrait should not be too crazy – people should be able to identify the picture


• Use medium that are related to myself, or represent myself
  
• Medium should be able to handle (for example, sugar will be hard to create and fix it after I’m done)
  

Image of picnik.com website

As soon as I start working on my design, I tried using a website called ‘picnik.com’ (http://www.picnik.com/). This website is similar to the Adobe Photoshop, but it’s much easier to use the functions. Even though I did not spend a lot of time on decorating my picture, I was able to create some awesome designs.

This is my first design. I used round edges, snow, duo tone, posterize and neon effects. When I saw the posterize effect, I wanted to make my photo to be graphical and sort of abstract. After I ‘posterized’ my picture, I wanted to make the colors to be simple and I chose two colors that contrast each other well: green and brown. Green is one of my favorite colors and it is known as the healing color since it makes people’s mind to be calm. I used neon lights to make show the edges clearly. I really like how I put the snow effect. Even though the picture became kind of messy after the snow effect, it matches with the pose I’m taking in the picture and it adds a fantastical look to my picture. This design follows some of my design specifications. First of all, it is a photo of me, and it expresses me such as using my favorite color for the background. I used internet to decorate it. Also, I believe the picture is not very wild and people would be able to recognize that it’s a person’s figure. Since I did not decide what material to use for the portrait, I do not have very specific ideas about materials. However, I think for the snow effect, I may use rice to give the snowy look. I can also use paints, and other traditional and non-traditional art sources to create the portrait. One thing I don’t like about this design is that I used round edge effect. I don’t know why I decided to make my photo with round edges, but I think it could’ve looked better without this type of edges. If I’m going to choose this design, I’m not going to make my edges round but straight.

This is my second design. Unlike design 1, it looks very abstract. I used hypnotic, duo tone, focal zoom and text effects for this picture. I really like the duo tone effect and I used it again for this picture. However, if design 1’s duo tone shows dark parts with dark brown and light parts with green, I switched over the colors for this design. So dark parts have very light green and light parts have black color. Because I changed the colors, my face looked very funny especially my teeth because they are black and glowing with light green colors. The picture looked like an x-ray film. I used focal zoom effect to emphasize my face so other parts were a little blurry than my face. After I used those two effects, I thought the picture is very similar to my first design. So I searched for some unique effects on the website and I found this hypnotic effect. After I used this effect, my picture got distorted a lot and I couldn’t find my face but my top of head and there were many hands. I think this represents that inside of my mind, there are lots of crazy thoughts and expressions of myself. I thought this image reminds me a word ‘illusion’ because it looked very mysterious and fantastical. That’s why I decided put the word ‘illusion’ on the picture. I like this design a lot and I think this design is more creative than the first design, but I figured out it doesn’t follow many design specifications. Even though it is a portrait of me and it represents my personality, I think it is hard to be recognized by others that this is an image of me. The hands are covering my face and even I can’t recognize where my face is. Furthermore, I don’t think I can use different sources to create the portrait. The design is very complicated and there are too many colors so it will be hard to describe the same for the hand-drawn portrait. I do not think I’m going to use this design as my chosen final one.

Image of photofunia.com website

After I did these two designs, I went to another photo altering website called ‘photofunia.com’ (http://www.photofunia.com/). This website is different to the previous one. If picnic.com was more like decorating only the photo itself, photofunia.com is adjusting my photo into real-life images. I think this website is also an interesting one and I made several designs from here.

As you can see, my picture is drawn on a wall by someone else in this design. It is a graffiti version of picture. Three are some other graffiti drawings next to my picture. I think my image on the wall is very similar to picnik.com’s ‘posterize’ effect. The picture is not portrayed with details but like an image from a poster. It looks more abstract than the original one. I think it is a very creative idea to put myself as a graffiti image, but I think this design is not very suitable in order to create a portrait. Basically, I used a photo of myself; however, this doesn’t show any of my personalities. I created this design just because I like graffiti. Also the picture includes some other images such as the graffiti painter, and some other drawings near my picture. Because of these features, it sort of looks like the male painter is the main character and I’m just an image drawn by him. Maybe I can get some ideas that I can add some graffiti designs on my portrait from this picture, but I don’t think this will be my chosen design as well.

This is another design using photofunia.com website. My picture is shown at a big business or shopping center, or at a station as an advertisement picture. When I see this picture, I feel like I’m a famous model from a fashion brand. I like how the picture is divided into small square glass or tiles. Also the people under my picture create this picture is not purposely made, but as if it was already there and make natural look. Nevertheless, like the previous design, it doesn’t represent me either. Since there are so many other figures in the picture, it’s sort of hard to say that the picture is mainly focused on me and I think the design will look very complicated after I trace it on a paper. But I am able to get a good idea from this design which is I can use the mosaic method when I create my portrait. Each mosaic piece is from the whole picture of myself and it represents a memory or a part of my characteristic.

This is my last design and I think it is very similar to the first design’s duotone effect. There are same pictures of me in different types of colors. I think this design is the best form with using photofunia.com website. The picture is like my pictures are shown in an exhibition. This design reminds me of Andy Warhol, a famous pop artist. The colors used for each picture implies some characteristics of me. For example the blue one represents the coldness or being rational. The red one means being angry or passionate. If there weren’t people in front of the pictures, I think the picture could’ve looked better. I think if I draw this picture bigger for the portrait, it will be an interesting picture to use with mixed media.

The final design that I chose is the first design. I think my first design fits to most of the design specifications and the picture only includes an image of me without any background. The photofunia.com used designs have a background with people or other architecture which is not very suitable in order to create a portrait. Also, the picture is not very complicated and crazy so I think people will be able to notice that it is a portraiture artwork. Like I wrote before, since this is going to be my chosen design, I’m going to fix the edges of the design into straight edges. From now on, I should start thinking about what materials I should use for the portrait. I think the create process will be very interesting and I’m sure that I’ll enjoy doing this project.

Portraiture Technology Investigation (1) Works Cited Page

Works Cited

“Barack Obama: “Breakfast of Champion”.” Ruminating Out Loud. 15 September 2009. http://wolafen.wordpress.com/2009/03/10/barack-obama-breakfast-of-champion/

“Food is Art.” Food is Art. 15 September 2009. http://www.foodisart.co.uk/index.html

George is such a sweet boy. 20 February 2008. http://www.metro.co.uk/fame/article.html?in_article_id=100687&in_page_id=7

Lv4Tunes. Jackson Pollack. http://media.photobucket.com/image/jackson%20polak/Lv4Tunes/pollock.jpg.

Muniz, Vik. Action Photo, after Hans Namuth. 1997. http://www.vikmuniz.net/www/index.html.

Muniz, Vik. Self Portrait (Fall II). 2005. http://www.vikmuniz.net/www/index.html.

Muniz, Vik. Valentina, the Fastest. 1996. http://www.vikmuniz.net/www/index.html.

Sudra, Anna. Art lecture. International School of ulaanbaatar. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. 8 September 2009.

Sudra, Anna. “Portraiture Technology.” Powerpoint presentation for MYP Visual Arts, International School of Ulaanbaatar. September, 2009.

“Vik Muniz.” Vik Muniz. 15 September 2009. http://www.vikmuniz.net/www/bio.html

Portraiture Technology Investigation (1)

I started a new project called "Portraiture Technology - Who am I?" In this new unit, I am going to use computer photo managers to alter one of my photos of myself and create a self-portrait. Also, I'm going to use mix media to draw a self-portrait in art class as well.

I came up with some questions that will help my investigation
· What are portraits and how is it important to myself?
· Why do/did artists draw portraits or self-portraits?
· What materials will be suitable for my final product and presentation?
· What can you feel when you see mixed media portraits?

Portraits are able to express many aspects of oneself to a society such as his/her characteristic, favorites or emotions or feelings. For me, portraits are a great example to know more about me. Since the portrait needs to include aspects that represent myself, I can think carefully about who I am and look for methods to describe myself on a piece of paper.

Even though many people believe portraits are created with using only one medium; however, in fact there are many types of different portraits using tons of variations. During the art class, my classmates and I saw some images of portraits that used different medium. There was one using lots of patterns, using papers to create three dimension (3D) image. Also there was a huge portrait of a man using millions of jelly beans. I was very impressed with this portrait because I could find out from the picture that the artist who created this artwork must have been put a lot of effort for it. Not only that, but I learned that jelly beans can be a good source to create an awesome picture rather than known as sugary and sticky jelly.

This is a portrait of a famous celebrity, George Clooney. What I learned from the art presentation is that all the materials that I can easily find out, no matter how big or small they are can be a medium to create a fabulous artwork. The society wants products to be different to others, unique and creative. Therefore, thinking out of the box and creating a mixed-media portrait is one of brilliant ideas to show one’s own identity.
I also looked for some other portraits with different medium. While I was researching, I was able to get so many creative ideas which would help me when I’m working on my self-portrait.

This is a portrait of president Obama. They are made of sugar cereals. It is created by Hank Willis Thomas and Ryan Alexiev. They created this artwork to celebrate the election of first black president. I like how they put shadow on the picture by using not only darker cereal, but colorful ones as well. They make the portrait look sort of abstract and more interesting.

This is a portrait of Marilyn Monroe that is originally created by Andy Warhol, a famous pop art artist. The picture is formed of lots of chocolates in different colors. It is hard to believe that it is chocolate-made portrait however if you see the background, you can see round chocolate balls in rows. I think this portrait is a very creative, unique one; however, I suddenly came up with a thought that the artwork needs to be stored in a cold place so that the chocolates don’t melt.

Miss. Sudra also showed us a video about a mixed media artist named Vik Muniz. Muniz is a Brazilian artist who used mixed media and created lots of artworks. She told us that this video might help us to get some ideas for creating mixed media self-portrait. I found some examples from his website.

Muniz used many different media to create artworks. He used medium such as thread, sugar, wire, chocolate syrup and even caviar. When I was looking at images of his works, I was very impressed and thought he is very creative. All of his artworks are very sophisticated and detailed. I wondered how he can come up with ideas to use such medium in order to create an awesome work.

This is an artwork using chocolate syrup. It is an image of famous painter called Jackson Pollock. I think his chocolate artwork shows Pollock’s image very well. The pose that he is doing in his artwork is very similar to how Pollock used to paint his picture. Also, I like how Muniz spread syrup to look like spread paint on a canvas. I think using chocolate syrup is creative but it will be hard for me to use for my portrait because it can’t be stayed for a long time since it will melt easily and mess up my picture if the room temperature is warm.

This is a portrait of an African child called Valentina and Muniz used sugar to create this artwork. I believed that that sugar cannot be a suitable material to show details; however, Muniz just proved that sugar does creates details. If I see the picture with a distance, it looks like it’s drawn by a charcoal. It looks very smooth. I like how he created shade with sugar. I’m curious that how can sugar be gray or black in his picture. Maybe he dyed it with dark tone colors. Again, this material is not a good source for me since sugar is also easy to melt and I don’t want to make my portrait look dirty.

This is Muniz’s self-portrait. He used sources that he can get in autumn such as colorful leaves, and dried branches. I really like this picture because the picture gives me comfortable and natural view. It looks like he is a part of the nature. Also, the colorful leaves make the artwork very bright. I think leaves will be a good idea to use for my portrait. If I’m going to use leaves, I should hurry to get some since winter will come soon in UB.

On the first day of this project, 8th of September 2009, all the classmates went out and took photographs of them. I also took several photos, and I chose one which my hands are covering my eyes. I wanted my picture to be unique than just making a smiley face, then I thought of this way to show myself.

There are some reasons why I covered my eyes. The first one is that I want to my other body parts. My parents, who have seen me for many years, told me that if I cover my eyes, the next part that is most noticeable is my mouth. My parents told me that when I smile the sharp canine tooth is recognized by them.

Another reason for covering my eyes is to show my personality that I like to hide some of my feelings. I like smiling in front of other people and I don’t want to show some of my emotions that may give bad impression on others, such as crying or getting angry. When you are sad or angry, even though you are not trying to express it, your eyes can show how you are feeling at the moment. So I thought that if I cover my eyes and smile, people could think that I’m happy, but in fact no one but me knows how I’m really feeling.

After I chose my picture, I thought what kinds of design specifications would suit self-portrait. Our class’ design specifications are:

·Multimedia(If the photo is suitable to be drawn with mixed medium)

·Technology (Picture should be altered using technological devices before drawing)

·Photo of self, no one else

·Express self (It should represent yourself)

Then I came up with some of my own design specifications which are:

·Portrait should not be too crazy – people should be able to identify the picture

·Use medium that are related to myself, or represent myself

·Medium should be able to handle (for example, sugar will be hard to create and fix it after I’m done)

Even though I'm not fully ready to alter photos using photo management programs, I have an idea that I'm going to create my photo that looks not very real, but kind of abstract. For this portrait, I'm thinking of putting large image without too many details.

So far, I have a few ideas for what medium to use. Since I am Asian, I'll use sources like rice or maybe noodles to represent that I'm proud myself as being Asian =). Also, I love animals, so probably I'm going to relate my picture to nature and animals. I think creating animal pattern will be a good idea.

In order to test my portrait again my design specification, I'm going to focus on whether people are able to recognize the picture and to think of any thoughts when they firstly encounter the portrait. I'm going to hang the portrait on a school wall. When I'm putting the portrait, I'm not going to include any information about the portrait and the portrait will be there without my name written down so that people wouldn't notice it is created by me. Next to the portrait, there will be paper and I'm going to put questions on it. For example, I would write "Who do you think the person in the portrait is? (It is a self-portrait from one of G10 students)" and "What kind of impressions does it give to you?" Hopefully if some students answered to the questions, I'll take the notes and look through their answers. If they guess them similar to what I expected, then I'm able to think I followed my design specifications well. I'm not sure if my test would work well, but I'll give it a try.

The project is related to one of AOI list called Human ingenuity. Human ingenuity is basically learning about creativity, action and thoughts. It allows students to think about human’s abilities to create, transform, enjoy, and improve the quality of life. There are two key questions of HI which are:

·Why and how do we create?
·What are the consequences?

Human Ingenuity is related to many aspects of our life. For example, it can be related to laws, languages, principles, arts and ritual habits as well. Our grade’s project is related to technology and art and we are going to invent our own portraits which are parts of Human Ingenuity.

To answer the key questions above, we create portraits both using different media and technology

to test what kind of effects we can get by using those sources. Every medium gives different impacts. For example, colored pencils give soft and smooth look while acrylic colors give very vivid and strong effects. Also computer photo altering programs give more graphical feeling to the portrait and other medium such as water color or pastels give more traditional look.

The consequences we may get are we can notice that we may learn more through experience. We can get information by just looking at some of mixed media artworks through books or internet web images, but feeling the texture of media and creating the artwork by our own hands, we can remember better about how that media is like or when should we use that media to give a certain look, etc. Not only that, but students also may have a chance to know better about themselves. For me, apparently there is not enough time to think about who I am and what I enjoy and vice versa. However, I believe this project will give opportunities to them to look back into their past lives and think about how to express them on a paper since self-portraits somehow show their emotions or characteristics.