Assessment Post

At the start of this semester I set out initially to explore different ways of creating portraits. I wanted to ultimately create mixed media portraits that had a bold use of expressionism, emotion and energy that would convey the subjects personality and ideas within the piece. I wanted to do this by using bold painting and drawing techniques, along with other subtle hints to the individuals work or life.

I first of all looked at abstract painting and the work of Franz Kline and Gerhard Richter, creating grounds onto which I could layer found photographic images of people and paint. Doing this on both small and large scale, these pieces worked well. Resulting in two large scale portraits of Elvis and Charles Bukowski, Inspired by techniques used by Jaques Villegle, Arnulf Rainer and the abstract artists I had previously looked at such as Franz Kline among others, mixing these processes together.

I then went back to my sketchbooks to create abstract drawings involving pattern and shapes. This was also inspired by an artist talk given by Lothar Goetz. Who's work had a strong use of shape, colour, line and repeating pattern. Josef Albers was also a big inspiration when looking into abstract shape drawing/painting. Overall I enjoyed using drawing materials and the bold aesthetic they created, especially when mixed with paint. After looking into Jean Michel Basquiat and Picasso's portrait drawing style I began to draw my own expressionist portraits mixed with these patterns involving shape, creating another large scale portrait, but using paint and marker instead of collage and mixed media. The first piece which was of David Bowie worked well, but I needed to carry on developing my portrait drawing style in order to convey the energy and expression I wanted my pieces to have, and possibly use less recognizable imagery (as discussed in the Shaun crit), and distort my pieces further. After creating more drawings in sketchbooks and on canvas, I looked at old stencil portraits I had made as well as creating new ones, as yet another way to explore creating portraits. I created another large scale 'final' piece based on a stencil of Jim Morrison. Also infusing text and hints to the artists life and work, in the style of the previous David Bowie piece and influenced by preliminary practice work (some of which is shown below).

Over all this piece shown at the bottom of this page worked very well and mixed together the previous processes I had looked into, Such as painting, pattern/abstract shape drawing and expressionist portraiture. The two large collage/mixed media pieces also worked well I felt and it was interesting to see the juxtaposition of styles when shown next to each other, I feel showing the wide range of exploration within my portraiture. Even though these pieces worked well, I feel in the future if focusing on portraiture I should move away from tradition materials and simple flat surfaces such as canvas or board, being more ambitious with materials and scale. But I am happy with the pieces created, I feel they have energy and emotion within them and are good tributes to the individuals I explored within them, and overall enjoyed exploring portraiture in general.

“It’s one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it’s another thing to make a portrait of who they are.” – Paul Caponigro