Symbolic Self Portrait

It was during my freshman year of college that I became obsessed with cacti. I was out on a long walk around Old Town Orange, trying not succumb to what would later become depression, when I passed The Potting Shed. I impulsively decided to go in and left half an hour later with a miniature cactus that I named Finn. You’re not allowed pets in the dorms so this little cactus became more or less my pet and the beginning of my cactus obsession.

When trying to decide what to do for this symbolic self-portrait, I knew for a fact that I didn’t want to simply do a nice realistic rendering of my face. As I scoured Pinterest for creative, abstract self-portraits to hopefully spark some ideas of my own, I came across many drawings and paintings, though realistic and detailed, caught my eye because of their bright color choices. That was the first thing I knew I wanted to incorporate into my self-portrait – irregular bright colors.

Eventually my friend showed me the artist, Boa Pham, who does whimsical illustrations of girls, typically involving flowers and abstracting the hair in some way. After looking through many pieces I essentially decided I wanted to do something with the silhouette of my hair, since I believe my person can be easily read from merely the shape of my face and hair.  I also came across the Hippo Campus music video around this time. I absolutely loved the color palettes and whimsicalness of it all (with the pastel pinks and greens in combinations with the black stars and silhouettes). I wanted my piece to be just as imaginative and whimsical as this video.

At this point I had many ideas of the types of styles and colors I wanted to include, but no actual idea of what elements I wanted to use in my portrait.

It was my friend who gave me the idea to do something with a cactus. It was such a simple idea I felt dumb for not thinking of it myself. The second she mentioned this idea, I knew what I wanted to do. For my major, I am required to do a senior thesis animated short film, created entirely by myself. I knew the subject of my thesis was going to be a cactus, so for the past several months I’ve been exploring the different qualities of this plant in search of entertaining story ideas.

One idea I had explored in depth in the past is a story about the reasons cacti are the best of the plants. Though they’re not the prettiest or most welcoming at first glance, they can be. Cacti can bloom pink flowers and bulbs. The prickles are a self-defense mechanism against unwanted predators. They’re easily adaptable to the most adverse climates. They’re very self-sufficient and don’t need too much to survive. I admire many of the traits cacti have and though I know I don’t always possess all of them, I strive to.

At this point, it was decided. I would do a silhouette of my hair with a cactus drawn inside, almost as if it were a pattern on my face. Though pink is one of my least favorite colors, I decided to incorporate it into the color of my hair to reflect the pink flowers that cacti grow. The pink, though very girly, is also very bold, bright, and confident -- qualities I constantly try to have myself.

I then played with several ideas regarding the background. I thought about using the form of my hair to turn it into rocks to bring together the idea of cacti and desert scene. This ultimately sounded like it was pushing the desert idea too much and taking away from the portrait. I knew from the beginning I wanted to do something simple, cropped the image the same way any ordinary portrait would be.  Still wanting to tie in ideas of the desert, I continued to look up images of the terrain. I then remembered another one of my favorite things about the desert, -- you can see the stars real well there. I have always loved stars and space, representative of my very hopeful, romantic way in which I view life.

While trying to cut the paper after finishing, I attempted to rip some of the larger chuncks and accidently tore a little much off. As I continued to tear the paper, I began to like the appearance of it more. The desert represented by the stars and the cactus in combination with the ripped paper made me feel as if the piece was tough and had been on some rugged adventure. Like most, adventuring is one of my favorite parts of life, and the ripped border conveyed this perfectly.

LINKS:

https://www.instagram.com/baotpham/?hl=en

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/im-cactus-in-the-garden-of-life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E43rlysYbl4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaRvS5ggtmE

Additional Reference Images:

 

Symbolic Self Portrait

Sheridan Scifres

11 March 2018

Advanced Drawing

Hybrid Painting

BLOG POST #1

Artist Statement:

            I took advanced drawing this semester, and just in general, not because I use a lot of drawing in my practice or because I find it one of my favorite mediums. I took this class simply to get better at drawing, specifically the figure, because that is something I struggle with a lot. Hearing from prior students of this class that we spend around 4 weeks working on it, I knew this was my time to really gain practice in this medium of depicting the human form. So, as for this assignment: self-portrait. I knew I wanted to not focus on being to conceptual, but rather to really focus on the technical aspects of figure drawing. I started by choosing a photo of myself, which was quite hard when I never take selfies or have images taken of me. I choose the best one and decided to work with the medium of colored pencils, because I also wanted to practice realism, which I’ve never done before. I immediately became engrossed in this project and 20+ hours later I finally finished. The process was long and hard, and even though I feel like I did not quite achieve it, it was such a huge learning process for me above anything else. The most difficult task amongst this whole project was learning hat colors to use for different skin tones. Being primarily Greek, Mexican, and Jewish. I have a lot of olive tones in my skin and finding colors that made me look more olive then orange, or more dark, yet not brown was really hard for me. Due to the fact that my drawing came out very pink toned with some oranges makes me only want to try harder to learn how to achieve different colored skin tones and variations. Conceptually, there is not much going on in this piece because that fact that it’s a self-portrait of me painting a self-portrait of me. So essentially it’s a frame within a frame, in film terminology. The painting I am drawing within my drawing is of me running in simply lines work. This is because I didn’t want to realistically depict myself running. This I choose because running is not so much an act of physically exertion, but also one of mental. I want this image to come off as a very strong and composed individual, being myself, with a lot of strength, yet at the same time delicate in my ways by the open nature of the line drawing. I myself have been a runner my whole life, and running has tought me so much about myself, more than anything has in the past. Its something I know I can always go to as long as I am healthy and healed. In a way, it’s a form of meditation, so this piece for me is very strong yet calm at the same time. Overall, this piece was mainly myself navigating how to technically draw a portrait and shade realistically with colored pencils.

Research:

1. Kristen Liu-Wong

2.  Kwangho Shin

3.  Emma Leone Palmer

3.Tanya Ragir

https://www.artistsnetwork.com/art-mediums/pastel/pastel-the-self-in-contemporary-self-portraits/

This link is an article about different contemporary artist and how they visualize and create self-portrait work. Its very interesting to see how to all differentiae and see the figure differently.

https://vimeo.com/40279845

How a machine can generate your own self-portrait, really cool, but is it actually art? Or is it the computers art?  Who claims authorship..?

https://vimeo.com/237142633

This is just plain cool!

Symbolic Self Portrait

I typically dread doing self-portraits, but this assignment gave me a bit more freedom than I usually have. As I began to think about the assignment, different ways of completing it began to form. My first idea was to draw my collection of movie, concert, and theatre tickets I've accumulated over the past 5 years. This idea was quickly discarded, and I tried to think of something more introspective.

The past few years have been a struggle to figure out what exactly I want to do with my life. I entered Chapman as an undeclared student not really sure what to pick as a major. While I enjoy political science and can see myself going down that career path, I'm not sure yet what I'm passionate about. Art is the same, I enjoy it but I don't want to be an artist, or at least not in the traditional sense. (Showing art at galleries, having a patron).

I feel like I'm living in limbo. I'm not really sure what I'm doing. Along with not know comes self-doubt and confusion. While these thoughts can feel like a constant weight on my shoulders, it helps to know that MANY people my age are experiencing the same thing. This article by Susan Hiller touches on this. So for my self-portrait, I wanted to try and portray that feeling.

Nyssa Sharp's self-portrait displays the feeling of inner monologue. I liked her approach of not fully displaying the face but still using the area to convey a message. The eyes are the main facial feature you see in my portrait, I used them to show how lost, and slightly fearful I am of the unknown and uncertainty that's in the future.




Henrietta Harris morphs the shape of the face along with the hair in that section. The sense of self is changed in her drawings. Are they sad? confused? worried? Their faces don't display too much emotion but there is still something strong in the overall emotion emitted from the drawings. I use the hair in my portrait as a sort of personal shroud of doubt. Hair that is personal to me, constantly around. A hazy fog in limbo.

I started to think about what kind of medium I was going to use and I came across Bao Pham and David Rees. David's use of untraditional colors to paint faces was something I wanted to implement. The colorful shades of blues, pinks, and yellows in both the face and hair. I've started using prime colors in more of my art pieces. Bao Pham uses watercolor and is able to create a shroud, or cloudy/ misty appearance is the figure's hair he's painting. I tried to mix the watercolor and gouache colors together to maybe signify different emotions. Constantly turning, ever fleeting, different intensities all mixed together

Artist Bio

They say you never stop learning and as an artist this statement is as true as can be for many reasons. Firstly, there are so many different areas in art, so many different fields in need of exploration that we can never honestly say we have done it all. Secondly, assuming someone is successful in trying all the different mediums out there, there are so many different ways to alter and apply the skill acquired to the practice of art as a whole that there is an infinite amount of ways to make a work. This has been the driving force and my motivation in my undergraduate program. Throughout my years in school I have experimented with various mediums and techniques, succeeding in some and failing in others. Success made me understand new materials and grow in my knowledge of the art making process. However, it was in failure that I learned the greater lessons. Those materials that did not come easy to me were the ones that pushed me to take a step back and try different approaches. This challenge tapped into my problem solving area of the brain and forced me to put those neurons to work and sometimes change my entire outlook. For me, one of the most important parts of the art making process is where the mind goes and how far it can be pushed. I thrive amidst the challenges of the unknown. 

That being said, for my final project in my Advanced Drawing class I decided to experiment with a medium that is relatively new to me. I have previously worked with ink, but I had never tried to use it in a way other than the conventional ink wash drawings in black. To the right is an image I found online (artist unknown) of portraits done with ink. The work is very linear and does not include much detail but is able to successfully capture the features and personalities of the people. This time, I embraced the quality of the liquid and mixed it with water in order to get a chaotic and spontaneous background for my work.Since I knew I would be relying heavily on water, I wanted to use clay board for this work to ensure that it would not be damaged by the use of liquids. I allowed the water to make its mark as it was placed on the surface while I guided it to where I wanted it to go. There was a good blend of giving and taking in that I allowed the ink to be ink, to move freely, before intervening and moving it about. This allowed for a combination of random spots of color and swipes of a brush. This by no means created a harmonious environment, but one that is more reminiscent and nostalgic, imitating the blurred world in which our memories reside.

For the subject matter I wanted to paint portraits of the four rocks of my family, the four pillars that hold us all up through everything: my grandmother and her three sisters. I have always said that I may not have known my grandfather, but I was blessed with having four grandmothers, something that not many people can say. These four strong women raised me and taught me everything I know about values and my faith, something that is an important part of who I am. I struggled through the process of making this because I came to notice and feel the impact of the lack of documentation. Two out of the four sisters are in Mexico and they do not have any form of technology that would facilitate the exchange of photographs. This is extremely frustrating because looking through my photos of my travels I had the usual ridiculous food and animal pictures but none of my two aunts and unfortunately I do not have the luxury of driving five minutes to their home to capture them as I did with my grandmother and her other sister. More than anything, this project has opened my eyes to what truly matters in life and to appreciate all that I have. I love these women and I sincerely hope that this care and admiration can show through the portraits. Although they are not photorealistic, they capture the blurry memory feeling and even some of my frustration throughout the process. I will one day make portraits that are able to capture the beauty of these women in the future. That isn’t to say that these do not, because I believe that they do, but they capture so much more and that is my own recollection of them and nostalgia. In fact, last week I dreamt that I walked into my home and saw that all four of them were in the same room, that I was able to hold them all at once and nothing else mattered to me because my heart was full. This project focused more on emotion than technique and I am very proud of the result.

As mentioned before, these last four years of undergrad have been the key to opening the door to many different techniques, materials and ideas. I have had highs and lows, but they are all bricks that form the path that I will walk through my life to one day find my voice as an artist and will continue to walk and grow from there because there is so much to learn, this time is mine!

Artist Statement

This piece is composed of 5 small (6”x9”) black and white charcoal drawings, paired with one large (12”x15”) colored piece in chalk pastel. The small pieces are each a render of a 35mm film photo that I have taken over the past year. I chose portraits of each of the influential women in my life; a best friend, a sister, a mother, a stepmother, a grandmother. I chose these women because I wanted to choose a subject that deserved my attention, and deserved appreciation. I’ve spent approximately 2-3 hours on each piece, adding layers of preliminary charcoal, then layers of erasing to create the right amount of contrast and depth within the drawing. Then going in with charcoal pencils of varying strength to add detail and shading. The piece du jour was the addition of the white charcoal pencil, which nicely blends all of the charcoal and adds highlights where they are needed. It also creates a texture that is well suited for drawing skin and hair. I chose to leave the backgrounds blurred and preliminary as to add emphasis to the portraits in the center. Some of the photos were originally in black and white, some of them I edited into black and white, I chose this pallette because I was inspired by the simplicity and nostalgic effect of black and white in photography. It is also much easier to render shading and tones in the black and white format. Furthermore, I am particularly keen on charcoal, and I like to experiment with the small variety of strengths of the pencils.
As for the large piece, I chose to go in a different direction and chose one of my favorite color photos that I had recently taken on a solo camping trip in Bryce Canyon. I was inspired by the natural beauty of the landscape, and the impressive range in color within each individual photo, regardless of the contents. The photo I chose has a unique composition, of a large rock structure framed symmetrically by two angled trees, and a touch of greenery edging the rock. The rock itself has a gorgeous range in colors of tans, reds, and yellows. I chose chalk pastel for the same reason that I chose charcoal for the adjoining pieces, because of their texture and blending abilities. I like the contrast of this piece in color, and as a larger statement piece paired with the small black and whites.

I plan to stage this piece as a randomly arranged collection, with the pieces close together but not linear with each other. With all of the drawings together, I envision this piece to resemble a wall of family photos in someone's home, each one exemplifying a person or memory that is important to me. I intend on distributing the photos to each of the women in them, as to spread my rendition of home to people I love.

Artist Bio

Jackie Domi is a sophomore studying Film Studies, and pursuing a minor in studio art. She grew up in San Diego, the sunshine capital, and was influenced by her mother and grandmother who were artists, they specialized in watercolor and painting. She has approximately two years of studio art experience under her belt, having taken classes in painting, photography, and drawing. She has taken quite a liking specifically to figure drawing and still life rendering, dabbling a bit in expressionist abstract forms. Her favorite mediums are charcoal and chalk pastels, preferring the messiness and fluidity of the chalky textures. Her themes have ranged from real life rendering to mindless doodling. She hopes to continue expanding her artistic endeavours by strengthening her articulation of meaning and integrating existential themes in her pieces.

Final Blog Post

This project is centralized around the imagery of hands. This series has three parts to it. Two of which are connected by message or concept. With the collaged hands in various drawing mediums and water colored backgrounds. The third piece is a mixed media piece which was done with a different meaning behind it.

The collaged works have a watercolor wash background transitioning from lights to darks with use of yellow and red and the other page with blue, purple, and black. The washes color are relevant and reflective of the timeliness of the person's' life. Also the different mediums used to make the hands are relevant to the age that I personally have learned the individual mediums. Starting with pencil, then charcol, ink, color pencil, and lastly marker which was a first attempt in this piece. The use of the different mediums shows different applications of styles and tools to represent a similar image. The concept of the piece referencing aging and deterioration and with continual grown along with age. Which is referenced or helped defined with the different use of mediums and the color pallet of the hands and the washes they are attached to.

The third piece which is a metal plate displayed above the collages has a different concept or meaning behind it. The outline or shaping of the hands are meant to look like a person begging or asking with humility. Either for food or money. The dark outline of the hands is made out of coffee grounds and glue. Which was first drawn on the metal or silver plate in sharpie. To implement so drawing medium to this piece but allowing the expansion of usable materials and presentation methods. The contrast of the black or dark color from the shiny silver is meant to reference different class systems within different world societies. With the brown being coffee grounds this references the “dirt” poor population which exists both in the US and in other countries around the world. Even though the “dirt” is really coffee grounds but the similarly in color and consistency allow the look of dirt without the sent and inconsistencies of actual dirt. The silver plate with the embroidery and extravagant patterning references the upper class who live life in extravagance while others are resorting to eating dirt. These issues are something that many want to resolve but the issue is challenging. However in certain countries such as North Korea where only the military is cared for while the general population is scraping together what they can to survive.