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.