Design Principles / Project 1 : Self Portrait

 

28-09-2021 - 12-10-2021
Esther Vanessa [0350751]
Design Principles
Project 1 : Self Portrait

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JUMP LINK

• Task
• Final Submission
• Revision

LECTURES

Self Portrait

• Sometimes our message or image when communicating can be misconstrued. 
• We define ourselves by what we like or our style

Figure 1.1 How do we define ourselves?

• It is a self representation in the form of a drawing/painting/sculpture/design
• It is a visual depiction of the self
• represents the designer - how we see ourselves or how we feel or how we want to be seen
• an exercise of self-exploration
• To start : make a mind map 
• can focus on which area that you want to represent

Figure 1.2 Traditional self portraits

Figure 1.3 More expressive self portraits

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INSTRUCTION

For our first project, we are asked to create an artwork for our self portrait. Based on the lecture given by Ms. Jinchi, self portrait could be anything that represents ourselves. It could be done on any medium and it's a free expression of ourselves.

TASK

For my self portrait, I try to explore myself a bit more. I spent a lot of time thinking and try to formulate something that is very much "me". I first try looking at a couple personality traits. First off, my zodiac is cancer and my MBTI personality is INFJ. I feel like I'm a very empathetic person and a selfless person. I always try to be aware of the feelings of the other person I'm talking to is, and I always try to be understanding. 

From that, I try to trace back my thought back to art. I want the art to show me, but not all of it is me. I am extremely aware of the fact that one personality is a constellation made out of a million others, and that I too, is a compilation made out of all the things that are close to me.

Apart from that, I feel like I laugh a lot, even in somber mood I always try to cheer people up. A couple of my friends have mentioned several times that I am a cheerful person. With that being said, I will try to visualize what cheerful is in my artwork.

Lastly, I try to look at my habits, what I like and I dislike doing. When going out, I love the nature more than the city, and I also live on a hill, close to a river and a forest. I love the sound and noises the nature creates more than the sound of cars or the city like it never sleeps. 

With all of the thoughts combined, I try to visualize them all in one artwork. I come up with this first sketch. 

Figure 2.1 First sketch (02/10/2021)

I try to create a composition where I want the viewers to see the background, the river and the landscape then come back to me (as the main focus), and that is why I put myself as small. 

However, I realize I'm not too fond of the concept myself. That's why I scraped it and make a whole new artwork.

I really really love flowers, I think they're one of the best thing that exist in the nature, and they come with a bunch of different meanings. I love artworks that uses flowers and I think with flowers, I have more room to express myself. I looked around and see artworks that incorporates flowers

Figure 2.2 Artwork with flowers

Figure 2.3 Another artwork with flowers

I am inspired to actually incorporate flowers in my self portrait, and I come up with this as my second sketch.

Figure 2.4 Second sketch (05/10/2021)

How I came up with this concept is that if you look at the left side the person (which is me) is smiling and surrounded with "happy" flowers, but if you look closely (reason for the monocle, to represent looking deeper and bigger) there's more into it and that I am built out of all these sayings and thoughts. I also think that this could create an emphasis, more on me and I want the flowers to create a sense of continuation, a flow, a crowd as I want them to frame my "face".

I got a couple feedbacks from Sir Charles regarding both of the sketches, and as I suspected, the first sketch lacks something, although he did give me a leeway and a couple suggestions if I really want to continue working on it. The second sketch, evokes emotion, discussion and plus, the idea is more concrete. However, the writings are not that great. Based on the feedback, I'll be changing the words into another set of flowers with meanings that contradict each other. 

So afterwards, I do a little bit more research on flowers. There are a set of flowers that I noted as potential flowers,

Left side (Good side):

- Blue daisy (Happiness)

- Sakura (Fleeting of time, renewal and optimism)

- Geranium (Happiness)

- Gladiolus (Strength)

I had a bit of a hard time with the flower choice for the right side since most flowers do not really have a bad meaning; people do not give flowers to insult the person receiving it. I first have taken a look at poisonous flowers, thinking they are a good replacement. However, none of these flowers call to me, they also have a meaning that does not resonate with what I want. But alas I found the flower Poppy, which has the meaning remembrance of the death, as there used to be lots of poppy flowers in the front line during World War 1. To some extent, I can relate to the flower, that part of me is mostly dead (or dormant, you can say) but that part will forever stick in me, the 'war' and the hardships I've been through. 

To tie the poppy together with the artwork, I choose Gladiolus as I think it connects well to the meaning of poppy flowers. 

I went ahead and started working on it. Mostly first starting by tracing the sketch I made. I added a couple more shading and elements. 

Before all this, I actually tried creating it in a square canvas, however composition wise, this is not that great to look at, therefore I changed it to be more zoomed in. 

Figure 2.5 Sketch Process after tracing the human face (12/10/2021)

There is not much to the process as I was pretty straight forward with my thoughts before. However I did go through a lot of flowers on the right side as I draw then erase as I didn't feel that any connection to any of them until I got to the point where I found poppy flowers.

Figure 2.6 Video process (12/10/2021)

Final Result

Here is the final result for my self portrait

Figure 2.7 Final Submission for Self Portrait (JPG) (12/10/2021)

Figure 2.8 Final Submission for Self Portrait (PDF) (12/10/2021)

So to recap, I want people to look more into me (with the monocle) and it shows that there is a duality within me, the side that is full of strength and the side that has gone through the war which are shown with the gladiolus flower that means strength and poppy which means remembrance of the death. 

REVISION

Me, a friend and Sir Charles was in a discord call where he suggested a few things that I could improve to polish the work. 

First, he suggested for me to fix the flowers behind the monocle, it should look bigger.

Figure 2.9 Final work after revised

Afterwards, he also mentioned that it'll be good for me to try and separate the work into two parts. This is to show the stark difference between the artwork. After all, I want the work to evoke two different mood. 

Figure 2.10 Left part - Happy, fulfilled

Figure 2.11 Right part - in a war

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FEEDBACK

First Sketch

• It lacks something, meaning doesn't really get interpreted well
• Could change the person to be holding daisies, making it look like she's holding onto something, some type of hope
• Person is not the center of attention

Second Sketch

• Words don't really work together with the flowers on the left side
• Should center the artwork more
• Could go with poisonous flowers on the right side

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REFLECTION

Working on this self portrait project is... suffice to say, interesting. I usually do not think too long when creating an artwork, I usually just set my mind onto something and just call it done after receiving feedbacks. This artwork, however, took a long long time for me to just sit, think and set things straight on what I really want to visualize. As Sir Charles has recommended, looking into our personality and our likes and dislikes, I eventually could come up with something that represents me well enough. This project makes me look more into myself and it required me to explore deeper of what I know about myself.