Friday 3 February 2012

Week 5 - Self Portrait from a photograph

Yeah! Yeah!  Before you take a sneaky look at my painting, there is a little artistic licence, I must admit.  No, not really, just that I used a picture of myself taken about 30 years ago.  Well, this week it was about our inner self, and I still feel a lot younger on the inside than I look on the outside!!  Anyway it was great fun, and the Workshop was by Kylie Fowler, an Australian Portrait Artist.  There are over 1000 of us who have signed on for this Life Book 2012, so from the tutor's point of view it must be extremely difficult to meet everyone's expectations, impossible I would say!  Kylie started the video with two black and white computer printed photos the same, but one was a mirror image.  We then cut out just the face of the mirror image and transferred it onto the watercolour paper using gesso - this was a first for me. (I'd done it on fabric - not with gesso though)  I rubbed rather too much of my face away, but it didn't matter, as the original was there for you to draw the face back in(with biro).  The idea was to make a type of cartoon, and fill in whatever you wanted for the hair and body etc. adding a crown or something, as this was representing your Inner Goddess! 
Kylie's second video was using a printout of her face, stuck onto watercolour paper and then colouring with watersoluble crayons.  She used all sorts of weird colours on her face, like olive green, prussion blue and red, as well as flesh, orange and yellow etc.  I decided to have a go on my face, and was quite delighted with the results.  Kylie's face was obviously still smooth paper when she coloured it, and mine was very 'rubbed up' and rough, but even so, the result of the weird colours I tried stll surprised me, which was the best bit of the whole exercise for me.   I'm really not into collaging - not yet anyway!!
If you want to join in the fun, click on the moving Logo - it's still not too late!
Till next time .........

7 comments:

Doreen G said...

Wow Val you sure are learning lots of new stuff these days--I can't keep up with you.

Mandi said...

This is fab Val, and you look very glam! :)

Heather said...

Your workshop sounds great fun as well as challenging. Love your portrait.
You are very welcome to drop in for a cuppa and a burnt offering though I am hoping to get it right next time.

sharon young said...

I love it, Val, it's such a happy portrait and the colours in the skin tones are brilliant.
When i was doing life drawing our tutor used to tell us to look for the colour reflections on the skin of what was in the studio and some of my paintings had the most unusual colours in them.

Jaana and Kia said...

Wow, so glam and pretty! Bravo!
Happy summer and cheers from Finland and Scotland.

jeremy said...

Lovely artwork.

drinking olive oil

Julia Ionov said...

I love the image, it's so pretty. Nice one. So attractive and very brilliant portrait you got there.
web design ventura