D I P T Y C H
Title: Face Chunks
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I N S P I R A T I O N :
S U R R E A L I S M
My diptych is inspired by modern day Surrealism and the theme of identity crisis. These artists' work mainly focuses on a person wearing a mask. The expression on each face tends to remain neutral, most likely expressing confusion. Confusion relating to which face is labeled "identity" or which piece fits the face like a puzzle piece. The separation from the real to fake face is emphasized through lines and perspective, almost creating a 3D effect. This allows the eyes to move back and forth from one side of the piece to the other, focusing on the face to the separated piece. I took direct inspiration from Identity Crisis by Stephanie Pham, and her use of 3 dimensional shapes that remain in front of the subject's face. Instead of a 3D perspective from the front, I wanted to focus on the right side of the portrait, seen in Artists' Impression of Sexual Identity Crisis. I admired being able to see the inside texture of the face, but rather than a thin layer, I wanted my face to be hollow. I like the piece breaking off their face in pieces, which is where my inspiration for my piece began. When I first started my sketch, I wanted to work with masks. My inspiration is from Identity Crisis by Chuan Ming Ong and her use of alternating masks, however I didn't want to portray only two identities. I was inspired by her body position, which shows the torso at an angles perspective. Even though her face is completely bare, I took inspiration by deciding to have zero expression on my face. I still wanted me to look like me, but from the side is where my face shifts.
A key artist that was added into my sketch was Salvatore Dali and the interpretations of Persistence of Memory. I wanted to explore surrealism more in my piece, so I decided to look into Dali for inspiration. The melting clocks in Persistence of Memory immediately caught my attention. I liked the idea of decay and the act of melting, I wanted to use this same concept in my piece- but for flesh instead. Dali's melting clocks represent the passing of time, which inspired the thought process behind my melting flesh on my shoulder. I wanted this piece of flesh to represent how identities come and go, and eventually die. We're not the same person forever, time eventually passes and we let go of old and embrace the new us. Another thing I admired in Persistence of Memory was the ants and flies. I loved how this specific element of the painting embraced decomposing. During my sketch planning, I thought about how I could show that these identities in front of my face are not who I am, they're others' identity. Instead of using a different color or texture, I wanted to use bugs only on the two pieces of flesh in front of me, not on my actual face, to prove my point. Lastly, in The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, I was intrigued by the pieces of floating rectangles. This inspired my first portrait, adding in two cracked lines on my face with shadows to make it look like it's popping out. I paid attention to the lighting of these shapes in Dali's painting, and plan on applying the same contrast to my piece.
P L A N N I N G:
I began with a very vague sketch of how I wanted both my portraits to turn out. I ended up changing my mind about my profiles. Instead of facing towards the canvas, I wanted to have an angle (little to the right) and of course my side profile face completely to the right. I also needed to figure out how many face chunks I would illustrate and/or have enough space for. I added two watch straps to the back of my head and still an indecisive amount of tethered chunks. This is the part that represents several different identities being forcefully attached to my own face. Since there were going to be ropes and chunks, I was determining what my hair style should be in sketch #2. Pulling it back would bring more attention to my face and what's floating in front of me. However, I chose for my hair to remain down for this painting because it looks most natural and casual. The same goes for my expression; the focus is on the flesh- not my front profile, therefore I decided to have a blank, staring expression instead of smiling.
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My third sketch was supposed to be my final sketch for this piece, but I ended up making changes on both my face and the shapes of flesh. The original plan was to have four pieces of flesh, each in front of my face with chains on the back of my head to keep them attached. I also included paint swatches to mark what colors I was going to use for the background, my skin, and my hair (the colors remain the same). My face is barely touched in the first portrait of sketch #3, with four simple lines touching my face. However, in sketch #4, I decided for my face to have two cracked lines around my eyes and chin. This was to add a little more spice to my portrait, since there weren't any manipulated elements on the first canvas. I also add a decomposing piece of flesh on my shoulder, to represent an old identity I once held. The four pieces of flesh turn into two long pieces of flesh that remain in the same spot, in front of my face. The hollowed out holes in
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my face will instead be filled with a photograph of me as a child. This is to represent who I am under all these layers and who I always will be no matter how many identities I go through in my lifetime. I only wanted the viewer to see this photograph from a perspective on the side, not the front. This is because I don't want you to see it, this would be labeled as 'too vulnerable' or 'not good enough' in my eyes as a child and still something I struggle with now. On each piece of flesh, I added bugs such as ants and flies. This was inspired by none other than Salvatore Dali in Persistence of Memory. The bugs show decay and rot, portraying an identity that's not mine, therefore it won't ever fit into my face, so it just sits there and gets old until it falls off- just like the one on my shoulder.
P R O C E S S:
Before sketching, I needed to create my canvases. I started by grabbing two 2 ft. wood slabs and two 1 ft. wood slabs. I place the corners into each other, almost like a pocket where it creates a 2 ft. x 1 ft. rectangle. I repeat this process for my second canvas. Afterwards, I take canvas fabric and cut out the shape of my canvases with scissors. I flip the wood slabs over on top of my piece of fabric. Then, I take a staple gun and fold the fabric over on top of the wood slab (around 2-3 in. over) and staple in a straight line. I do this for all four sides, remembering to pull the fabric tight but not too tight. After doing this process for both canvases, it's ready for gesso. I gesso each canvas three times, and after the third I was finally ready to start tracing my photo. For this process, I used a Mitsubishi projector and an HDMI cord to connect it to my laptop, projecting the photo on my google drive onto the canvas.
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It took a good while to get my picture to line up to the canvas, but one at a time, I would slowly start to trace over every line of my face and body with a led pencil. Not only would I trace over each line and crease, but also outline each patch where lighting has changed, so I know where to paint to make it a more realistic painting. This was especially important for my hair, because it has many highlights that reflect the light next to me. I didn't trace any of the items in the background, because I don't want those to be in the actual painting. The color of the background will be the same in the photo, because it's a nice neutral color that contrasts with my body. After tracing all the facial features and lighting changes, the majority of the painting is complete. My plan is to paint the background, face, and body first. After that is complete, I will trace over where I want each piece of flesh to go, as well as the jagged lines on my face.
I started off by matching the color of the background, which is this very warm sienna brown. My first plan was to have two different shades to enhance my face, which is why one brown is lighter than the other. Then I start finding my hair colors since there are multiple highlights. I had to try different brush strokes so it looked like the hair was flowing the way it was supposed to go, instead of just up and down. On the second painting, I started figuring out skin color. I have very pink undertones in my skin, so after experimenting with shading, I needed to add much more red. There were different parts of this side of my face that were brighter than others, specifically on my cheekbone and forehead. These were the parts where I had to add pure white, since my skin is pale. Then, on the cheeks and temples, I added burnt sienna to portray shadow and carve out my face shape.
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As I found my skin tones, I started to carve out the features of my face with deeper tones and add shadows to my chest, nose, and eyes. There were different shades of shadows I needed to use under my chin, since I needed some middle-ground color to blend them in. The eyes were difficult since I needed to subtly blend each color in order to not look flat. To avoid this, I use burnt sienna with black added to it for the ring around the irises and the eyelashes. Painting on my makeup was a challenging process before I figured out I had to paint OVER my skin color. In the photo, I have an almost orange-brown eye shadow and highlight near my tear ducts. I couldn't add these right away because it looked unnatural, so I needed to apply a layer of neutral skin tone, then blend in the makeup colors.
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By this time I pretty much finished with all skin related features. On the second portrait, I leave patches of white on my face since it isn't worth painting, i'll be covering those sections with a photograph later. I finalize my nose by contouring and shading, and using a dry, flat brush helped the blending look much more natural. Then, I started to complete my left eye, with black-brown eyelashes and a creamy colored white for the whites in my eyeball. When painting the eyebrows, I had to repeat the same steps as my makeup. In order for it to look natural, I needed to blend in a soft brown INTO my skin color. I took a small point brush and painted strokes of light brown onto wet neutral skin color paint, so it's easy to blend. After all the eyebrows, I focus on the background. I was sick of the different tones of brown and wanted to change it to one solid color. I color matched some swatches onto the photograph and painted as much warm sienna as I could, which looked much more solid and aesthetically pleasing.
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I started to work on my hair and sweater, which were both pretty similar when it came to shades of brown. My hair had a lot of highlights in the photo, so I tried to mimic that color with a sienna brown. I moved by brush in a circular pattern to create a curly texture for both the low lights and highlights. I continued this brush stroke around my face and shoulder, where my hair would be flowing another way. After the main area was complete, I used a fine point brush to create small strands of hair around my face and neck. After my hair, I moved onto the sweater. The sweater had a deeper red tone to it, with slightly lighter highlights for the patchwork. I began painting one section of the sweater at a time, covering the entire area with dark brown. Then, I use the highlight color to blend into the browns to illustrate the design, my shoulder crease, and the shadow of my arm. This part required my brush stroke to be smaller and lighter because of all the tiny patchwork details and constant blending.
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I color matched the previous background color and finalized the rest of the bare space and some edges. I then focused on the lips, which was a subtle mix of purple, white, and red. I had four different shades of red for each lip shadow. Then I moved on to the flesh. The flesh piece on my shoulder was a mixture of browns, yellows, and beige. I used these colors to portray decaying skin and blended them in with extra decaying spots. The flesh in front of my face is my general skin color but a shade darker to illustrate the beginning of decaying. I used mainly brighter shades of red for the floating flesh and darker, red-brown for the flesh on my shoulder. While letting those dry, I started using a fine point brush and pure black paint to create two crack lines on my face. I wanted this part to have shadow to portray 3D, so I create another layer surrounding the current layer of cracks and shade it in with a deep red (to look like flesh). Afterwards, I painted small black ants and flies on my flesh to add to the decay. I wanted these as similar to Dali's bugs as possible, so I mimicked the size and color scheme.
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To finalize all the details, I added the rest of the bugs onto my first portrait in the same area as my second and added two grey curved lines. This line is the tether that tethers these pieces of flesh to the back of my head. I wanted this to look as simple as possible but still contrast with the background. So, I used a light grey that reaches to the middle of my flesh pieces. Then I started to add the photograph of me as a child. I planned to have my eye where my eye in the painting would be, and the rest of the face would be on my neck. I cut out the pieces and constantly have to cut a little more off the fit the crevices perfectly. After, I got glue and quickly paced to photograph on top of the canvas and held the paper there for a minute. I made sure to touch up the edges and continue pressing down to make sure they don't move and reveal any blank canvas.
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E X P E R I M E N T A T I O N:
My eyes required the most intricate detail because the brush strokes had to be delicate and short. Specifically for my eyelids, I needed to experiment with how to show the shadow because it looked flat with plain skin color. This was directed toward the lower part of my eyes where they met the skin. The lips also required different shading. I needed to make the corners and the bottom of the bottom lip darker and increasingly get lighter as I reached the top. I realized I had to use yellow to add more color, a little more dull almost, so it didn't look like I had bright pink lips. Then, I needed to use my skin color and try to blend my lips into my skin, without blending them into each other. I tried to gently blot my brush along with lip lines with my skin color, that way they would remain seperated.
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I had to constantly reshape how I was going to draw the cracks. I wanted it to be big enough to cover my cheek and neck. I also had to match it with the other portrait, so I tried to mimic the shape onto this portrait. After, I started with long, but crooked brush strokes. This ended up looking messy and blended into my skin. I found out that using smaller strokes keeps the lines clean and evenly pigmented. For the picture on the right, I had to outline where I wanted the bugs to be placed. There was a limit to the amount of bugs per piece, because the bugs indicate decay. The placement of the bugs was crucial, since Dali had a certain placement of his. All the bugs are facing the middle of the object they're on, so I was inspired to do the same.
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Before painting the flesh, I didn't have a clear image of how to make it look as realistic as possible. Since I don't know what human flesh looks like, my solution was looking at some pictures of meat online. As i was searching, I tried to mimic the technique of shading and shine. I had three different drawings of meat, and eventually chose the first option. When placing the photograph on the canvas, I had to constantly cut more and more off to perfectly fit the shape. I had to cut in an almost criss-cross pattern to look like the cracks on the first portrait.
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C R I T I Q U E:
Similarities:
- Color Scheme. The colors in my piece mainly revolve around neutral tones such as creams and browns. In Persistence of Memory, the colors of the ground are similar to the colors of my hair and sweater. The mountains in the background are a cream color with hints of orange, which are also similar colors to the flesh on my shoulder. -3D. In Face Chunks, I have a piece of my face coming out with some 3D indication lines, similar to Identity Crisis. Both chunks of face surround the eye, and look like they're in front of the face. There is a similar red color on the side of the chunks among the two pieces, as well. -Decay and bugs. Both Persistence of Memory and Face Chunks contain small black bugs to portray decay. I was inspired by Dali's ants and flies on his melting clocks, and I wanted to use it in my piece as a statement. The melting decay is also similar between the two. Dali illustrates melting clocks, they have a curvy shape and bend over at the edge of the table similar to Face Chunks where the flesh has a similar curvy shape with the edge flopped over the shoulder. |
Differences:
-Background. In Face Chunks, the background of both canvases are plain brown. In my inspiration, Dali includes mountains and a foreground and middle ground in his painting. In Identity Crisis, Pham includes lined patterns behind the portrait. Instead of creating a background scene, I used one color for the entire background to portray a wall. -Medium. There are two separate mediums between Face Chunks and Identity Crisis. Identity Crisis is a digital based art piece. It contains layers of digital numbers and filters on top of a portrait. Face Chunks is a canvas based medium, all the contents of this piece are either painted on the canvas or glued. There are no layers or digital work involved. |
R E F L E C T I O N:
For my first painting project, I genuinely enjoyed this process. I was able to recall some techniques I used the previous year to better my portrait, because this time it was entirely self made- not an imitation of a previous artist. I was surprised to see some changes I made since the first sketch and how different the attention grabber of the piece turned out to be. There are some things I would change about it, such as adding some more shading around my eyes and mouth to make them look less flat. I would also change the positioning of the photograph I inserted to match with the features of my painted portrait, like having the jawline match up. I was satisfied with how my face turned out, I was not expecting it to look as realistic as it does considering this was my first painting I ever painted of myself. I find that my favorite works of my own are ones that portray internal struggle. I can accept and acknowledge obstacles I wish to overcome, but to see it in front of me makes me feel as if I'm understood. I think "Yes, this is what it feels like.", and I hope others feel the same acknowledgement when they look at my piece just as I did.
C O N N E C T I O N T O T H E A C T:
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and it's effect on your artwork?
Salvatore Dali uses small, black bugs to indicate decaying clocks in his piece, which I incorporate into my piece particularly on pieces of flesh to indicate the same meaning.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding your topic of your inspiration?
Pham uses 3D factors in her piece that represent separation, this indicates false contentment. The subject is cluelessly separated from a piece of themselves.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
I have concluded that identity crisis objectively feels like the subject is being split in half, generally feels like they are or should be one identity or the other.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The theme of my piece is experiencing an identity crisis and how it may not be visually obvious but rather how it's depicted in our minds.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
Identity crisis is often depicted as chaos such as expressing with multiple symbols and can tend to be an overcrowded piece.
Salvatore Dali uses small, black bugs to indicate decaying clocks in his piece, which I incorporate into my piece particularly on pieces of flesh to indicate the same meaning.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding your topic of your inspiration?
Pham uses 3D factors in her piece that represent separation, this indicates false contentment. The subject is cluelessly separated from a piece of themselves.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
I have concluded that identity crisis objectively feels like the subject is being split in half, generally feels like they are or should be one identity or the other.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The theme of my piece is experiencing an identity crisis and how it may not be visually obvious but rather how it's depicted in our minds.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
Identity crisis is often depicted as chaos such as expressing with multiple symbols and can tend to be an overcrowded piece.
C I T A T I O N S: M L A F O R M A T
"Artists' Impression of Sexual Identity Crisis" Kairos. 2018. https://fineartamerica.com/featured/artists-impression-of-sexual-identity-crisis-kairos-latin-stockscience-photo-library.html
"Identity Crisis" Ong, Chuan Ming. 2016. https://chuanming-ong.tumblr.com/search/Identity+crisis
"Identity Crisis" Pham, Stephanie. 2016. http://www.bcx.news/photos/art/exhibits/collections/san_jose_doors/stephanie_pham/?file=Identity_Crisis_by_Stephanie_Pham_20180529_111800_C18_6463.jpg
"Persistence of Memory" Dali, Salvatore. 1931. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79018
"The Disintegration of Persistence of Memory" Dali, Salvatore. 1954. https://archive.thedali.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=1652;type=101
"Identity Crisis" Ong, Chuan Ming. 2016. https://chuanming-ong.tumblr.com/search/Identity+crisis
"Identity Crisis" Pham, Stephanie. 2016. http://www.bcx.news/photos/art/exhibits/collections/san_jose_doors/stephanie_pham/?file=Identity_Crisis_by_Stephanie_Pham_20180529_111800_C18_6463.jpg
"Persistence of Memory" Dali, Salvatore. 1931. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79018
"The Disintegration of Persistence of Memory" Dali, Salvatore. 1954. https://archive.thedali.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=1652;type=101