SUMMER ASSIGNMEN

T 2014 Maria Espinoza 1633

During the summer holidays I visited the National portrait gallery

to get some inspiration before I started doing my own self portrait. To the left there’s 4 portraits that got my interest as they all have

different styles of painting. Some are very expressive and some are

realistic, what I like about all of them is the use of colour and tone.

VISIT TO THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

Roald Dahlby Sir Matthew Arnold Bracy

Smith

The Artist by Catherine Goodman

Jordan by Alan Coulson, Mother #1 

by Yunsung Jang,

A STUDY OF A PORTRAIT PAINTING

Helen Mirren by Ishbel Myerscough

(National Portrait gallery)Ishbel Myerscough used Oil painting but I used normal

colouring pencils. My main focus while I was painting this is to focus on the toning. As you can tell my version

is more vibrant as I used more darker colours to show more contrasting between colours. Overall, this study

did help me to elaborate for my final self portrait.

Ian Mckellen by Clive Smith 1967(National Portrait gallery)Clive Smith used Oil painting but I used normal tone pencils. The shading was very hard to study on as the original painting is using colour therefor I had to concentrate more on the shades. Overall, this study improve my drawing skills.

by Artful Curisities

Used oil painting

INSPIRATION ARTIST

I chosen Artful Curisities as I love the way he paints, its between a combination of realism and

expressive, I also like the tone as he mainly focus on the tone but instead

of using normal toning colour, he uses bold contrasting colours to represent the toning depth. The composition he used is quite simple and shows the

entire face therefore I’m willing to do the same. I’m also inspired by the

texture he creates that’s why I chose to paint this study with oil pastels as it’s one of the best media to use to

represent texture but for my final self portrait I’m going to use oil painting as

the key to this project is have a self portrait painting therefore I cant use

other media’s. Overall, I’m quite happy I chosen Artful Curisities as he has loads of key elements on the way

he paints therefore I’m willing to challenge myself and do a self portrait

inspired by Artful Curisities.

PORTRAIT PAINTING

This is my self portrait, it took me long to decide the position of my face and it was very hard to find the right skin tone as my skin tone varies. What could have been better was to draw careful before starting to paint as I drew my face too slim therefore I had to use paint to add

more width to my face which helped but it wasn’t very accurate and I honestly

think my eyes aren’t very realistic as its to big and bold but it was good first try.

Overall, this self portrait helped me improve my painting skills. My chosen artist is an expressive artist which uses

colours to add tone and depth but I didn’t use contrasting colours as my

artist did as I found it too hard but I did focus on the tone like my artist did.

EVALUATION

My opinion on this project is that it certainly improved my fine art skills as the main concentration was painting and finding inspiration on other self portrait artist. This project will definitely help me decide on weather I’m going to pick fine art or design or multi media for the next project were going to do. This project also helped me improved my evaluation skills on analysing other artist work on what caught my eye, what I liked it and how can this help me for my final piece self portrait. Overall, it was good project to explore on the fine art side.

MY OPINION OF THE PROJECT

My final self portrait was mainly focusing on the tones as the artist I chosen got so many toning technique therefore I decided to take those technique forwards and try it myself. The colours I used wasn’t very vibrant and contrasting like my artist used but I did use bold simple colours but I could of used expressive colours but I wasn't brave enough. The media I used was acrylics, it was very easy to blend and mix but it dries quickly so you cant redo stuff, unfortunately I did loads of mistake so acrylics wasn't the best chose as I count redo my mistakes. Overall, it was quite a challenge but this will help me learn from my mistakes and I wont make the same mistakes for my next on going projects.