Abstract Version 1

I'm probably going to have to abstract it some more, but I liked the way it looks now so I wanted to save/post before I mess with it!

Self Portrait

I began my research by looking for movie stills with dramatic lighting and/or emotion. I found quite a few I thought were interested from Mean Girls (emotion), No Country For Old Men (lighting & emotion), Jack Nicholson (emotion), Girl Interrupted (lighting & emotion), and Game of Thrones (lighting & emotion). After considering the requirements for the assignment I slimmed down my selection. My favorites were...

 Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) - Game of Thrones

and...

Lisa Rowe (Angelina Jolie) - Girl Interrupted

So where do I go from here? I asked myself. Well Cindy took photos for us the one day of class. I like the lighting in my photo, but I hateeeee my face in it, the position of the camera makes me look like I have a double chin and my expression looks too forced. So I might keep it as a reference for lighting, especially if I decide to stick with the Jolie picture.

(the photo of me, ewewew xD)

My next step, before I could really begin working on this project, was to research and decide the style in which to make this self portrait. I thought I'd do a painting, something beautiful and perfect! Very realistic. So first I looked up "famous self portraits" and more specifically famous female self portraits. The ones I am posting here are the ones that stood out to me the most.

Van Gogh (1887-88') I liked the stylized technique of painting in his self-portrait. I'm thinking of applying this type of style, but with my own twist, to my portrait.

Zinaida Serebriakova (1911) I really loved the finished/unfinished style of this! Its a great example of not pushing a picture too far. I love the smoothness of the skin. I also like the borderline realistic/character-ish style. I may be the only one seeing that I'm not sure.

Then I began thinking that a realistic painting is so safe and is something I would usually do for an assignment like this because I'm too worried about meeting the requirements and getting a good grade. After considering this and seeing an image I had saved on my iPad a while ago because I loved the style, I started thinking of another approach.

Unfortunately I found this a while ago and do not remember where or who it was by. I have to explain that I am a HUGE comic/graphic novel NERD! I got my hands on a copy of Black Hole after seeing Heidi's presentation on Charles Burns and he is now a new favorite of mine. I'm also a huge fan of Charlie Adlard's work in the Walking Dead and Dave Gibbon's work on Watchmen. 

Rick from the Walking Dead by Charlie Adlard

Rorschach from Watchmen by Dave Gibbons

So I dived into the graphic novel world to pull inspirational styles that would work best for my idea. The main sources I looked at were Sin City by Frank Miller, Blackhole/X'ed Out/The Hive by Charles Burns, Sandman by multiple artists such as Jill Thompson and Sam Keith, etc. The following are just a couple of images I saved.

Sin City by Frank Miller

Charles Burns

Jill Thompson

All of these styles are great and are very important to inspiring me and pointing me in the right direction. I believe I will do this digitally so I can get a clean look, the following are just some sketches I've done to warm up.

I want to push the emotion I'm expressing so I will be revisiting my first images from the movies/shows. I really liked the heart-eating idea so thats a possibility. I think I want to color it and I love the impressionist style. So I think I have a good idea of what I want to do! Finally after all this rambling haha.

Heidi Fancher

"I am inspired by people’s stories, their lives, their hopes,and their histories" - Heidi Fancher

I picked this quote out immediately after I read it because this is what Fancher said in response to "what inspires you," and I draw inspiration the same exact way. I am inspired by people and their backgrounds, which I think comes across in my personal work very obviously.

While reading her interview I realized how much research she conducts before piecing together her work. This is completely opposite of my style, I usually don't research at all. (I do more research now than I used.) I also enjoy how she works with many different types of media, I am very intrigued by all areas in art such as drawing, painting, sculpture, animation, film, installation, photography, modeling, etc. Unfortunately it was hard to find a lot of her artwork to really discuss, but I wanted to write about Fancher because it made me happy knowing an artist of her stature is inspired by the same sources as myself. Although I'm sure there are plenty of other artists who are also inspired by real life stories and events, I have never read or heard a direct quote stating that.