Color in a Grey WorldSize: 36in x 36in (91.5cm x 91.5cm)
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas, Self-Portrait January 2020 "Color in a Grey World" is a self-portrait inspired by famous contemporary artist Chuck Close, and by the growing style of doodle art. In this piece, I wanted to highlight how art affects my life. If I didn't have art in my life, I would be an entirely different person. Art gives me more personality. The title refers to the impact that color and art has on me and my personality, and what our world would be without it. |
Planning
Inspiration
I had a lot of inspiration for this project, the first being Chuck Close. Chuck Close is an American artist, well known for his extreme realism and high attention to detail in his portraits and photography. He was part of the Photo realism and contemporary art period, popular in the 1960s and '70s. Photo realism rose to popularity shortly after pop art, and was not popularized by one person in particular, but rather by many. I love that in his portraits, he leaves nothing out. All the imperfections, scars, hairs; nothing is forgotten. This is what I hoped to capture in my piece. He suffered a seizure in 1988 that he refers to as "the Event" that left him paralyzed from the neck down. This means he had to find a new method to painting because of the limited use of his arms. He developed a way to paint by attaching a brush to a modified wrist brace, and deemed his new work the "grid method" where he would create a grid on the canvas and work in squares. My next inspiration, was the doodle art style. I've personally been using this style for years, but it's not proven where it originated. It was given this name in the 17th century with the word "doodle" quite literally meaning fool or simpleton. I personally see quite a stigma behind doodle art, simply thinking anything can be doodle art. I see it as a close cluster of different thoughts and ideas to express a story or feeling. But I thought that this would be a great was to show some of the most important things in my life. There are many growing artists that do this style, one of the most prominent, goes by Vexx. Vexx is a young artist that uses this style in mostly graffiti, and has a few million followers on social media.
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Symbolism/Meaning
In "Color in a Grey World", it is myself pictured in black and white, connecting to everything I love and bringing color into my life. Art has made a huge impact on my life. It brings me happiness and is something I use to vent my feelings. Without it, I'm not sure where Id be right now. I'm someone who has many different sides to me and many different hobbies, importances, and interests. I wanted to highlight the most significant in my life, and in this painting, you can see some of them like my passion for music, shoes, strive for money and impact of time. I love making music and singing, collecting shoes, making money and working, and the hourglass represents my bad comprehension of time. I hate time. I hate how fast or slow it passes depending on what you're doing, and that it so often catches me off guard.
Planning/Experimentation
For this, I really wanted to practice drawing people and shading them correctly, with detail and accuracy to prepare for painting myself. I took it upon myself to create 6 portraits of people I know, my friends, coworkers. Here are all my portraits followed by the pictures I used to create them. I wanted to try and draw people of different ethnicities, ages and genders. Some features are added for accuracy that may not be on the photos if they were taken some time ago. They were just simple sketches that I wanted to do to practice blending and face shape. Below is my rough official portrait sketch.
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Canvas ] Preparation/Painting Process/Experimentation
Canvas Preparation
First, I had to get 4, 3-foot planks to create the frame to stretch the canvas over. I used a hammer to connect and make sure the elbows were secure. Then, I laid out a roll of canvas and placed my frame on it. I cut the piece of canvas so there was about three inches extra on every side of the frame. Then, I used a staple gun to start stapling the canvas to back of the frame. I started in the middle and worked my way out to the edges, leaving the corners un-stapled, to ensure there were no extra canvas ripples. Before a new staple, I made sure that I was slightly pulling the canvas to work out extra ripples and to make the canvas tight. Once that was complete, I worked on the corners, trying to make sure they were completely flat. If the corners were pushed out and protruding, the canvas wouldn't hang well on the wall. Once the canvas was secured to the frame and I was satisfied, I began to prep it for painting. I used Gesso to first prep the back of the canvas, then the edges and corners, then finally the front. I soon realized I made the immediate mistake of stretching the canvas way to tight. I personally like my canvas tight when I paint, but forgot to account for the canvas shrinking as the Gesso dries. I noticed as soon as I began painting, because it began to warp really badly, and was becoming bent. I was going to create a new one, but the following day when I returned to the dry Gesso, the canvas had almost fully recovered.
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Painting
For the painting process, I began by painting over the gesso with a whitish/beige, but it ended up not being very visible. I then copied my planning sketch onto the canvas and began outlining it with a Posca Paint marker. I found this to be so much easier then trying to get evenly thick lines with a paintbrush. I then, began filling in the shapes with vibrant colors, making sure they were opaque. Once everything was painted, I re-outlined everything with the third Posca at this point, and began on myself. I started with painting the hand, which turned out much better than I had anticipated, and then moved on to the hair and rest of the face. I had a little trouble adding shading to the hair because I do have fairly dark hair, and in black and white hues, it's almost black. I spent most of my time blending the shades of the face, and finally once I was satisfied, I added the squares for little pops of color and to add to the hectic nature of the piece.
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Compare/Contrast
Similarities
Mine and Close's
Mine and Close's
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Reflection
If I were to do this again, I think I would have created some planning paintings rather than sketches because though the drawings did help me in figuring out where to add appropriate shading and dimension, I think it would have been more beneficial to try and do paintings because that's the medium I would be working with. I also would have maybe experimented with Poscas a little more because I found in my outlining that it dried a little weird if it was layered too many times. I think I could have put more detail into my hair as well. I think maybe more shading to it would be an order. I really feel like I learned so much in this project though. I was under the impression that the teeth would turn out horrible, but I wanted to challenge myself, so I did smiled anyway and I think they turned out fantastic. Theres a notes/experimentation page I created along the way for myself here too.
ACT Responses
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationships between your inspiration and its effect upon your artwork...
Chuck Close accentuated the imperfections in his pieces to make the person seem perfectly imperfect and I tried to do the same.
What is the overall Point of view the author (from research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The authors of my research gave an in depth review of Chuck Close's artistic intention and inspiration, as well as how he created his pieces and why.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
The photo realism movement was a popular art period popularized by many artists collectively painting in hyper-realistic detail.
What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
My central idea was to make something with imperfections that are just a significant as the rest of the piece.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
After researching Vexx, I could see how amazing some smaller artists art can be, and how having a social media presence can get you to be a larger name as well.
Chuck Close accentuated the imperfections in his pieces to make the person seem perfectly imperfect and I tried to do the same.
What is the overall Point of view the author (from research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The authors of my research gave an in depth review of Chuck Close's artistic intention and inspiration, as well as how he created his pieces and why.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
The photo realism movement was a popular art period popularized by many artists collectively painting in hyper-realistic detail.
What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
My central idea was to make something with imperfections that are just a significant as the rest of the piece.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
After researching Vexx, I could see how amazing some smaller artists art can be, and how having a social media presence can get you to be a larger name as well.
SOURCES
Images
Cecily. (n.d.). Retrieved 2020, from http://www.artnet.com/artists/chuck-close/cecily-a-v8WcvQd9lnkSg7ojnsGL6g2
Dragon Doodle. (n.d.). Retrieved 2020, from https://vexxart.bigcartel.com/
Self Portrait with a Cigarette. (n.d.). Retrieved 2020, from https://paddle8.com/work/chuck-close/69896-self-portrait-with-cigarette/
Websites
“Chuck Close.” 349 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy, www.artsy.net/artist/chuck-close.
“Chuck Close.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 12 Apr. 2019, www.biography.com/artist/chuck-close.
Cecily. (n.d.). Retrieved 2020, from http://www.artnet.com/artists/chuck-close/cecily-a-v8WcvQd9lnkSg7ojnsGL6g2
Dragon Doodle. (n.d.). Retrieved 2020, from https://vexxart.bigcartel.com/
Self Portrait with a Cigarette. (n.d.). Retrieved 2020, from https://paddle8.com/work/chuck-close/69896-self-portrait-with-cigarette/
Websites
“Chuck Close.” 349 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy, www.artsy.net/artist/chuck-close.
“Chuck Close.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 12 Apr. 2019, www.biography.com/artist/chuck-close.