Symbolic Self Portrait

Symbolic Self Portrait- Ellen Chapman

At first, I was hesitant on how I wanted to approach this assignment. My first initial instinct was to draw an actual “self portait” of my face and try to be true to myself physically and include drawings of my interests and hobbies. However, after researching some “symbolic self-portraits” I found that many of them didn’t contain a physical portrait of a person at all. Some that I was mostly drawn to were the contents of someone’s purse, or their bedside table. They illustrated objects that were drawn to represent the person as a whole not just physically. So I began to think about things or possessions I had that represent who I am or what matters to me. My first initial thought was my journals, or books. However, those represent my thoughts that are calculated and thought out. So I looked around my room and my eyes immediately went to an object I am always coming back to since this past August: my guitar.

            I started playing guitar my freshman year of high school. It was a spur of the moment decision, I was walking around some shops in suburban Pennslyvania, saw a guitar shop and spontaneously decided to buy one. Over a couple months, I picked up some chords here and there, but didn’t dedicate enough time to master it. Then high school began to pick up and the passion and desire to learn fizzled out.

            It wasn’t until the end of this summer, when I was going through major lifestyle changes, I decided to come back to the instrument as a means for distraction from the difficult parts of my life. I took my dusty guitar out of the basement of my home in Virginia, and brought it to sunny California. It was then I really began to dedicate time to learning. I watched youtube videos, spent hours every day practicing chord progressions and even began taking lessons from a friend. I found that when I was playing, I forgot about everything else I had going on in my life. All that mattered was the song I was trying to master, or the scale I was trying to learn. Guitar allows me to forget about the world, and focus on something beautiful and pure. Music. It is so special and absolutely integral to my happiness to this day, which is why I decided to choose my guitar to draw for my self-portrait.

            I chose charcoal as my medium because it is easily mallable and it allows you to add value without difficulty which mattered to me because that ties back into music as a whole. The white marks on the guitar represent soundwaves as I wanted to give it breadth and a musical quality. The examples I included below where some inpirations I found which relate back to using possessions as an expression of self.

Symbolic Self-Portrait

Hanouf Alharbi

Advanced Drawing 

MAR 12, 2018

Symbolic Self-Portrait

Nine years ago, I started to draw portraits with pencils. Then I started painting with acrylic colors. After a year of painting with acrylic, I decided to change the medium to oil colors. It was harder than acrylic because you have to use a lot of tools and products, as well as you have to clean your brushes very hard because oil painting doesn't go away quickly from brushes. After I learned how to paint with oil colors, I fell in love with the final result of my paintings. For me, oil colors are the best. It makes your painting very realistic. I started painting large sizes of paintings. I was excited about three international galleries. Most of my paintings have a story behind them. Emotional, dramatic, sadness, happiness, and even personal stories. However, I have some paintings that don't have stories behind them. After I learned how to paint portraits, I decided to focus on one thing on people face, which is eyes. I draw and paint eyes because it is our most expressive characteristic. Happy, sad, upset, angry, tired, like, dislike, or cry, all these emotions you can know it just by looking on someone eyes. I have painted eyes on canvas, wood, and fabrics. So my painting skills have improved quickly. Last semester I was looking into improving my drawing skills as well as my painting skills so I decided to take the drawing class. This semester I'm taking the advanced drawing class. It's a great class more that what I was expecting. I am learning a lot of things in this class. My drawing skills with dry media have improved as well as with wet media. We are using chorales, watercolor, and ink to draw. I did some projects in this class, and the most recent one is the Symbolic self-portrait. I have to draw anything that belongs to me. Like my self-portraits, something in my bag, or anything that belongs to me. I thought what things that belong to me I can draw it instead of my face portrait. Last week was my little sister’s birthday, so when she blew the candles, I remembered my birthday. So I got the idea of drawing my zodiac sign, which is Scorpio. However, I decided to add another thing that belongs to me and fit with my zodiac sign. I found that my fingerprint will match perfectly because it's oval shape so it can fit with the scorpion’s body. I chose charcoals and pencil as the mediums to draw my fingerprint first, and after I finish it, I started to draw the head of a scorpion. Then I continued to draw the hands, legs, and the tail. This is my first time that I drew a scorpion and a fingerprint. It was a really enjoyable project for me because it was also my first time to drawing something that belongs to me. I could draw my face portrait, but I chose to change and do something else that I have never done it before. And I found symbolic self-portrait project helps me to express my personality to the others by drawing things that belong to me.

1- Emilio villalba 

http://emiliovillalbaart.com/

 

2- Alice Neel 

http://www.aliceneel.com/home/

https://alchetron.com/Alice-Neel

3- Alpay Efe

http://www.alpayefe.com/

Symbolic Self Portrait

After the first project, I found out that working on a large scale was actually quite enjoyable and not as daunting as it appeared. For this project I chose a 19x25 sheet of paper, and although I wish I could have worked bigger, I feel I made the right choice given my own time constraints. I decided to work with charcoal because I enjoy the range of values it provides and it tends to be a quicker, more expressive medium, and I like working with it. To figure out my concept, I looked through many different artists’ portraits and self-portraits, and you can see the results of this research in the photos. These images influenced the style and thought process I used to arrive at the final concept, which was to use a reference photo I had taken of me while in Pisa, Italy.

The story behind the reference photo is that while staying there with a friend I decided to take my sketchbook and draw the leaning tower plein air. This is not something I often do because I get extremely self-conscious even carrying a sketchbook in public, much less trying to draw from life. I don’t even like people watching me draw- it gets me very nervous and I usually just put my sketchbook away if I feel like too many people are watching me. But this time I figured I would be brave and do it anyway, even though the leaning tower had huge crowds of tourists around it at all times. While I was drawing I had three separate people ask to take a picture of me drawing in front of the tower, and I’m sure several more did it without asking. I know a couple more people stood behind me and watched me over my shoulder. I had planned on doing a full pencil and watercolor painting of the tower, but I got pretty anxious so I packed up after I had finished the pencil sketch. Unknown to me, one of the people who had taken my picture was my friend, who had been taking pictures of tourists for her photography class. I actually really like the picture; I look like I’m off in my own world, completely separated from the strangers around me. I decided to use this photo as a representation of how I feel when I draw. I get to completely escape into another world where I am entirely focused on what I’m doing, and all my other thoughts and worries go away for a few hours. I thought this would be the “symbolic” part of my symbolic self-portrait. For the background, I used an imagery that I have drawn many times in my life, and that I plan on getting tattooed on my ankle. Cedar trees are everywhere in my hometown of Seattle, and they are very meaningful to me and how I grew up. The mountains in the background are similar to the two mountain ranges that surround Seattle, and there are three representing my father, mother, and little sister. I figured those symbols would be fitting as a background for my symbolic self-portrait.

Charcoal Drawings Sketchbook drawings
Portrait drawing