Self-portrait Illustration
Overview:
Title: A Summer Gaze Size: 25.5 cm x 38 cm Medium: Colored Pencil Date of Completion: August 2023 Exhibition Text: A Summer Gaze is a self portrait that portrays an image that was taken of me in the summer time, a time that I enjoyed myself. This piece is inspired by self portraits created by Frida Kahlo and helps to depict the theme of identity and self confidence. This piece has allowed me to portray myself in a way that I see fit and has helped to release some emotions I felt in the process. |
Inspiration: Frida Kahlo
When I thought about doing a self portrait for my illustration piece, it was obvious to me that the inspiration for the piece would be Frida Kahlo. I looked through a collection of her works and was instantly inspired by the two works that are presented above. The first one is one entitled "Me and my Parrots" and the second is "Self Portrait with Loose Hair." Overall Frida Kahlo is one of my favorite artists becuase of how truly representative her paintings are. She expresses emotions and true portrayals through her works which I am heavily inspired by. Specifically in these works I am inspired by how accurate the paintings are in the depictions. I was also inspired by how much detail Kahlo fits into one painting. The details in the hair and the clothing is what I really want to be able to recreate my self portrait for this project. I have often struggled to be able to include this depth of detail but looking through the collection of Kahlo has inspired me to be able to work on my skills and develop these specific ones. Lastly, I also want to be able to get the clean and crisp lines that Kahlo has in her paintings. However, I will be working with colored pencils instead of paint. Getting the clean lines in colored pencils could be easy or could be difficult depending on the type of pencils I am using.
Planning
The first step in the planning phase was to determine what it was that I wanted to illustrate. I knew I wanted to do a self portrait out of colored pencils. My mom had taken some pictures of me previously so I decided to use one of those. On the left are those images along with my plans for them. I did a quick sketch of each image to see how easy or difficult it would end up being. I also took into account the color palette that would be used for each image. This helped me to see the difficulty level of each recreation so that I could narrow down my options.
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I ended up choosing the bottom image for my illustration. This was image was definitely my favorite one that was taken of me, which is the main reason I ended up going with it. Also the color palette that I would have to use is very similar for multiple of the components. I lived the simplicity of the shapes that form the background and the contrast of the colors between myself and the background. The next step was to create a larger sketch to plan out each of components. On the right is the sketch I created with swatches of the multiple colors on top.
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Process
Once I had all of my ideas figured out and my planning sketch created, I then had to transfer my sketch onto my illustration board. The way I did this was to put a layer of graphite on the back of my planning sketch and trace the image onto my illustration board. This is a trick that I learned in one of my previous art classes. I noticed that the tracings on the illustration board were fairly light so I went and darkened the lines and added more details where they were needed. I did not include all of the details such as where the shadings will be. I included these as I went through the coloring process. It was important for me to only have the outlines of shapes at this moment in the process. Everything else would fall in line the further I got into it.
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The first part that I started coloring was my hair. In the original image the only detail that is really visable is the reflection on the top of my head. The rest of my hair did not have much detail. To recreate my hair I used a black colored pencil and added in the dark brown details more in the front. I used a harder pressure in order to make sure that not much of the board would be seen. The reflection the top of my head was created by using a lighter pressure on the same black colored pencil. Deciding which colored pencil to use for my hair was kind of difficult for me because my hair is a very dark shade of brown and often appears to be black. I tested out the darkest shade of brown colored pencil that I had but it was still slightly too light. That is when I decided that I would do most of my hair all black and add hints of the brown on top of the black. This is how I was able to get my hair to be a very dark shade of brown that is fairly close to my actual hair.
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The next section I chose to work on is my arm and my shirt. For my arm I used a light skin tone color for the inner part of the arm and a darker shade for the outer part. This helps to establish where a potential light source would be in the given image. I later used these same shades for the face. Next I worked on the shirt. FInding the perfect color for the shirt was also kind of difficult for me. I tested out four different colors, which can be seen in the experimentation section. I ended up going with a shade called "salmon" which gave the perfect orange-pink shade. I outlined where the three buttons will be located so I didn't end up coloring those in quite yet in the process. The next step was to color in the rest of the shirt. I layed down a base layer of the color and repeatedly went over it to darken the color to the desired shade. I blended out the layers to get rid of as many streaks as possible.
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As seen in the picture to the left, the next steps that i took was the facial features and the shading of the shirt details. I used the same two colored pencils for the face that I had used to color in my arm. I colored my whole face with the light shade and then used the darker shade on my forehead, around the nose, and on the neck. I then used the black colored pencil for the glasses. Once I had finished the facial features, it was time to do the details on the shirt. This was definitely my favorite part of this entire project. I used the shade "mahogany" to create the darkness that resembles what would be the wrinkle lines in the shirt and the shadow from behind the bricks. in order to create the highlights all I used was an eraser. I used a very light pressure with the eraser to slightly lighten where the highlights would be. For the buttons, I used the same darker color for the shades and light pressure on the "salmon" color. This helps to increase the level of details.
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The next step in this process was definitely the hardest part for me. It was creating the bricks that are behind me. Trying to color match to the original picture and getting the same level of details was a very hard process for me. I used thirteen different colored pencils in order to match the colors. These ranged from shades of red, shades of brown, shades of gray, and black. I switched shades of colored pencils often in order to create the range of brick colors that all stand out from one another. For the background I used a base layer of black and some brown in order to recreate the shadows that are present in the original photo. I then created some rectangles of darker black, tan, and gray to give the illusion of the bricks in the background. This same process was repeated for the bricks on the right.
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Expirementation
Critique
There are many similarities and differences between my illustration and the inspiration pieces created by Frida Kahlo. The most notable difference is the mediums of the pieces. My illustration was created using colored pencils on an illustration board. On the other hand, these two pieces by Frida Kahlo were created using oil paint on canvas. These two different mediums are very noticable in the images above. The paint gives the clean, even appearance to Kahlo's paintings. It is visable in my piece that the colored pencils were used because of how thin the layers of color are and the slight appearance of the streaks. Kahlo also has more of a significnt culutural inspiration behind the meaning of her pieces which is not highly prevalent in the creation of my illustration. However there are some very similar themes that are within both of Kahlo's pieces along with my own. Those themes include emotions and self confidence. This is one of the reasons I decided to do a self portrait: to explore how I could include these in my illustration. Kahlo includes these themes in all of her self portraits which is why I find her work to be very inspirational to me. She has been an inspiration for quite a few of the works that I have created.
Reflection
Overall, the process of creating this self portrait illustration was both fun but also kind of difficult. To start, my favorite part was being able see how I could manipulate the color pencil in order to create a realistic version of an image. This is also where the difficulty came into play. It was kind of difficult for me to make the piece look entirely realistic. This was the first time doing an illustration strictly from colored pencil. The one I had done previously was sort of a mixed medium illustration. This one was strictly colored pencils. I used a mixture of the Prismacolor colored pencils along with Crayola ones that I already had at home. The Prismacolor colored pencil were one hundred percent better than the Crayola. However, I believe that the large color range that I had with the Crayola came into great use. My favorite part of the entire illustration was creating the shirt. I loved being able to use the different shades and the eraser in order to make the wrinkle lines and the highlights. While this was extremely fun, the hard part came in having to do the bricks. I wanted to make them as realistic as possible but I think they could have been better. Overall I woud say that creating this piece allowed me to think about the emotions that I was feeling during the creation process while also being able to show off my creative side. Colored pencils are a medium that I have been using longer than I can remember, except this time it was more elevated at a different level. I think I was able to expand my skills with this medium to put to use in the future. on future projects.
ACT Questions
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork?
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
- My inspiration is Frida Kahlo. She uses her culture and emotions in her pieces to demonstrate her current state of mind and feelings to whoever views her works. This is something that I try to do in my pieces as well. I try to express my emotions and my feelings through my work as well.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
- The overall topic of the inspiration is self identity and emotion. As stated previously Kahlo often uses her feelings in her art to showcase them. This allows for the viewer to be able to resonate with her and generate feelings within them.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
- While this is something that I already knew, I came to the conclusion that people are very emotional beings. Art is a way for us to be able to work through them and is a way of expression. I also came to the conclusion that cultures and other topics have a very large influence on how art is created and presented to the viewer.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?.
- The central idea or theme that I have been working with for many of my projects and have been researching is identity. This can be broken down into many other subcategories that I have explored.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
- I made inferences while reading through the creation of the piece by Kahlo. Reading about her story and learning about her past allowed me to make the conclusion that art could be therapeutic for Kahlo and that she uses art as a way to heal and move on from things that have happened in her life.
MLA Citations
Me and My Parrot, 1941 by Frida Kahlo, www.fridakahlo.org/me-and-my-parrots.jsp.
Self Portrait with Loose Hair, 1947 by Frida Kahlo, www.fridakahlo.org/self-portrait-with-loose-hair.jsp.
Self Portrait with Loose Hair, 1947 by Frida Kahlo, www.fridakahlo.org/self-portrait-with-loose-hair.jsp.