Self Portrait on a Lily Pad, 2007

Good day Lured Ones!

Today I want to give some insight into a portrait I did for my high school IB art class in 2007. I showed an image in a previous post about my visit to my old high school, but I did not explain. So here goes!

Around this time I was learning the process of canvas making, and decided to make my own canvas for the self portrait. The dimension requirement was pretty large, so I decided to make it about life-sized. As you can see the small top left image, Ms. Drum was helping me make the canvas, and bottom left you can see how big the canvas is relative to me (I am 5 foot, 1 inch tall). 

 

On the right is my finished painting done in acrylics. The whole concept was that I am sleeping, dreaming on a lily pad on the water. Initially I intended for the water on the lower part of the canvas to have unclear dark images that suggested a nightmare. I had trouble sleeping and often had scary dreams that bore no clear meaning. The fog is suppose to be dense to give a hazy and dream-like mood. 

After I finished, I spent some time observing the painting and I decided that I could have done better around the stomach area. The fabric of the shirt on the stomach is too straight and unreal. Also on the hand, the ring finger is longer than the middle finger, which is highly inaccurate >_< I've always had trouble with hands. Also, it was pretty unfortunate that someone took a pen on my painting on the face area. I had stored it in the supply room, so there was no way to figure out who. That's not too important because if I wanted to spend some time fixing it up, I could cover it.

If I were to fix up this painting, what do you think I should change or do differently? Ideas are very much welcome and appreciated :)

Until next time, I hope your weekend is going fantabulously!

<3

Visiting my old high school's IB Art class

Good afternoon everyone!

September was a busy month and I wasn't able to post as often as I'd like. However, I was doing things that I could blog about all the while - just didn't have time to sit down and gather photos and edit video clips for uploading. Now that I am back and have some time to myself, I can slowly but surely update you on what I've been up to.

Two weeks ago, I visited my high school teacher and she invited me to return the following day during her IB art class and meet the new kids and see what they were working on. This was such a trip down memory lane because they were working on their self portraits and I was at this point in the class years ago. I was able to speak to some students and learn about some ideas and messages behind their pieces. It was very insightful and I felt so honored that one student shared a particularly personal story behind her piece.

The students were great and so was their work. Here are some works done by students in Ms. Drum's IB art class. I will also share the self portrait I painted at the end. So make sure to scroll all the way down, and enjoy!

 

Now here's what I did 5 years ago when I was at this point in the class:

I intended for this post to be about my visit to the class, so I shall give further insight to to this painting in my next post :)

Until next time!

<3 Kara

Self-portrait in the style of Amedeo Modigliani

大家好！ Hello everyone! Today I am bringing you a self portrait!

The first picture (top left) was a sketch I did in 2003. At this time, I was just doodling and drawing whatever I could.  As I became more involved with graphic and web design, I decided to mess around in Photoshop and make a rough digital version (top right) the following year. At this time I was so into making vectors, and I was still figuring out the ins and outs of Photoshop without a guide or tutorial, so I'm sure this digital rendition could use a bit of work. However, I do like this rough look to it and do not have plans to change it in any way.

The final painting (bottom picture) was the result of an IB art assignment. I was to research an artist of choice and do a piece in the style of that artist. At that time, I was trying to re-sketch this self-portrait from 2003 to make it better, since I was really interested in portraits. Now this was 2007, so a couple years following. I am basing everything on the sketch and digital version that I made (I couldn't find the original photo). Also, I could never draw myself to look like myself, so I was constantly trying to improve on that.

I was going to choose Georgia O'Keeffe because I had taken a bunch of close-up pictures of flowers and felt that her flower pieces were extremely beautiful. But I really wanted to work on portraits, so I chose Amedeo Modigliani. It turned out well because I was able to incorporate a bit of my style with some of Modigliani's style. I had fun with this, and there were two main reasons why I chose Modigliani. The first and main reason is the way he did the eyes, which I found fascinating. The eyes are just one murky color with no real details of what an eye really is. With the thought of the eye being the gate into someone's soul (wow that was corny), the lack of an eye really says something to me. The secondary reason is the backward "S" shape of the subjects. He paints is subjects in a way where you can trace the basic shape of a backward "S". I thought that was interesting too. And when I looked at my sketch, I saw that an "S" shape could be traced, so I thought this would be a good choice as the subject for the assignment.

I hope you enjoyed my self-portrait in the style of Modigliani. This was done in March 2007.

<3 Kara