Pushin Up Daises – 04/13/22 – Newspaper, oil paint, oil pastel, and ink on paper 22×30

Subjective Self Portrait – 12/4/21 – Oil and paper on canvas – This is the first part of a two-piece project. We had the freedom of creating a secondary self-portrait and making it abstract as possible. As I’ve said before, I’m very interested in the topic of how we consume media. In this self-portrait, I wanted to explore how we portray ourselves online. We make sure we only show the parts that we want others to see and hide away from everything else. It’s dehumanizing in a way, and your sense of self can easily be lost. I added the cutout eyes all around me to create a sense of anxiety. The feeling of wanting everyone to see what you post, but also not wanting to be judged or constantly in the spotlight.

Objective Self Portrait – 12/4/21 – Oil on canvas – This is the first part of a two-piece project. We had to paint an objective and subjective self-portrait. Our professor gave us the restriction of only using our pallet knife to apply the paint for this piece. I knew that I wanted to play with lights and shadows in my portrait so I took many pictures of myself in a dark room using only the lighter as my light source. I moved the lighter all around my face, creating different shadows until I had an image I was satisfied with. After that, I thought the composition was a little boring so I edited the colors of the image until it had this green hue. This piece was a lot of fun to create. I learned a lot about underlying tones — just because my skin looks green in the picture, there are still reds and yellows in the tone underneath. I also loved creating the strong contrast in lights and shadows to create the glowing effect from the lighter.

Recreation and Abstraction – 11/1/21 – Oil on paper – For this project, we had to recreate a famous painting and abstract it in some way. I chose Vuillard’s Woman in a Striped Dress to recreate for my painting. From left to right, Vuillard’s painting, my recreation, and then my abstraction. I decided to cut out a circle around the women’s faces and paint the negative image on top. I think the abstraction could have been stronger — maybe painting the negative image over other areas — but overall I’m very happy with my recreation.

Changing perspective – 10/28/21 – Graphite on paper – In this drawing, I sat down in a hallway and drew a wall underneath some windows. I wanted to play with perspective in this image and the white wall literally created a blank canvas for me to play with inside my first drawing. I then took pictures around campus and decided on one of the entrance to the fine arts building. I really like how seamlessly the two perspective images blend together almost as if you could walk out of the hallway and up the ramp into the next building.

Consumption of media – 10/6/21- Graphite, charcoal, oil, glue, and newspaper on paper – For this project, we had to recreate an image using a reference photo and then find some way to abstract that image in an uncontrolled manner. A topic I’ve been very interested in lately is the consumption of media — specifically overconsumption. I found a photograph of a child holding an iPhone and really liked how he is very concentrated on the screen. For my uncontrolled abstraction, I found newspaper articles to glue on top. I like how all the articles are relevant to issues happening across the country and globe. A wanted poster for a job because no one wants to work anymore, an article about women fighting for the right to abortions in Texas, Doja Cat at Austin City limits, and people going back to the office. I glued the newspaper on top of the image and let it dry for a minute then ripped it off and allowed whatever was behind to stick. The composition reads as an overload of information from media which is a problem many of us deal with. The fact that it’s a little boy holding the phone also shows how easily young kids can find stuff that might not be appropriate for them. There was a comic strip that had a man with a thought bubble thinking about sex which is right behind the boy’s eyes. This is probably my favorite piece I’ve done.

The Untrue Self – 10/6/21 – Graphite and charcoal on paper – I’ve always been fascinated with creating realistic self-portraits and then morphing the image to make it less human — adding extra eyes, mouths, or other facial features. To get this image I used a face warp filter on the app TikTok and then rendered the image in black and white. The image by itself seemed flat to me so I added a texture along the skin of almost uncontrolled scribbling. Of course, I was conscious of where I was moving the pencil but I mostly just let my hand flow along my skin. The lines aid in the feeling that my face is being pulled to the right.

Still Life – 9/23/21 – Charcoal and graphite on paper – This is a still life done over the period of two classes. I focused a lot on getting the textures correctly for each material.