DESIGN PRINCIPLES WEEK 3 / PROJECT 1 : SELF - PORTRAIT

01.29.2023 - 02.03.2023 / Week 1 - Week 3

Agnes Fadhyllah (0360503)

Bachelor of Design in Creative Media

Week 3

Because theres no class due to Chinese new year celebration, Mr.Charles advised us to start working with the self portrait and watch the pre-recorded videos. the objective of this project is to see how we see or define ourself in visualization , on how we view ourself, our experiences, our own thoughts about ourself, and about our life.

Visual Research

Portraiture is an art of a person, either drawn, painted, photographed, designed, or sculpted. portraiture are usually made to symbolized power , beauty, or simply memorial in order to record the appearance of someone. portrait painting flourished from 5000 years ago from Ancient Egypt.

Creating a self portrait is basically creating a likeness of yourself, representing the designer/artist on how they see themselves or what they're feeling (which could also be influenced on how people viewed them).

(Fig 1.1 - Junji Ito's Self Portrait)

(Fig 1.2 - Hirohiko Araki self portrait with Kishibe Rohan [A character in a series he made])

Modern Self portrait comes with lots of different styles, Pop styles, Canvas painting, Manga style, Comic style and many more. the figure one is a self portrait of my favorite Mangakas in their own style. There are more ways to create a self portrait, examples will be given below.

1. Pop Art

Pop art has a caustic and cynical emotional tone, making it perfect for self portrait styles that shows expressive/hyperbole emotions, these styles also had colorful, bright and vivid colors making easy for attracting people's attention towards the portrait

(Fig 1.3.1 - pop art portrait of Marilyn Monroe from Pinterest)

(Fig 1.3.2 - pop art portrait from Pinterest)

(Fig 1.3.3 - pop art portrait of John Lennon from Pinterest)

2. Picasso style

Picasso's paintings to have unique and weird faces that give character to his distinct and recognizable style. Picasso and Braque used simple shapes and a small range of colours to paint objects, people and landscapes

(Fig 1.4.1 - Picasso's self portrait from Pinterest)

(Fig 1.4.2 - Woman Portrait from Pinterest)

3. Sketch Style

Sketch art style explain sketch, traditionally a rough drawing or painting in which an artist notes down his preliminary ideas for a work that will eventually be realized with greater precision and detail. The term also applies to brief creative pieces that per se may have artistic merit.

(Fig 1.5.1 - Woman Portrait from Pinterest)

(Fig 1.5.2 - Woman Portrait from Pinterest)

4. Surrealism

Surrealism aims to revolutionise human experience. It balances a rational vision of life with one that asserts the power of the unconscious and dreams. The movement's artists find magic and strange beauty in the unexpected and the uncanny, the disregarded and the unconventional. making a self portrait look dreamy and explaining lots of stories, personality or dreams that an artist would like to put inside their portrait

(Fig 1.6.1 - Woman Portrait from Pinterest)

(Fig 1.6.2 - Woman Portrait from Pinterest)

Design Process & Idea Exploration

whenever i think about self portrait i always think of how i hate myself , especially when i look in the mirror, so i would like to visualize myself looking in the mirror and with a figure behind me whispering bad thoughts about me, that figure will represents my intrusive thoughts.

at first i wanted to add a twist of horror into the illustration, here are the visuals that inspires me into making this self portrait piece.

(Fig 2.1 - A panel from Junji Ito's Manga)

(Fig 2.1.1 - A panel from Junji Ito's Manga)

i am a big fan of a mangaka/manga artist called Junji Ito, he is a horror mangaka and i love the way he draws pretty woman, and bizarre stories. these pictures helps me visualize the shadow in the background of my reflection whispering stuffs into my ear (which represents my intrusive thoughts).

(Fig 2.1.2 - A panel from Junji Ito's Manga)

and so i took a picture of myself on the mirror as a reference , and this is how it looked.

(Fig 2.1.3 - A Mirror selfie of myself)

i also got more inspirations from pinterest, adding more stuff into my self portrait, and here are the pictures that inspires me for the atmosphere and mood

(Fig 2.1.4 - An art panel from Junji Ito's Manga)

(Fig 2.1.5 - a reference art from Pinterest)

(Fig 2.1.6 - A reference )

Then, i added a broken mirror effect to visualize me trying to ignore or kill my intrusive thoughts. using this reference of a broken mirror.

(Fig 2.1.7 - Broken mirror reference from Pinterest)

i added a few elements to make the illustrations look darker to give it a gloomier vibe, by adding some filters on my drawing application (i am currently using Medibang Paint Pro). i added some Gaussian blurs on my linearts, some japanese patterns for the noise, another layer of darker filter, and lastly adding a screentone filters on the back, adding an influence from pop art style.

the picture below are the moodboard for the drawing im going.

(Fig 2.1.8 - Moodboard for self potrait, All picture taken from Pinterest)

heres the first sketch i came up with.

(Fig 2.2 - First Sketch)

And here are the progresses of my sketches.

(Fig 2.2.1 - Progress of Sketch)

at first i was pretty satisfied with only fig 2.2.1 , but i decide to add more things to make the picture more alive, adding a simple animation-ish(?) and ends up with 5 pictures.

and after that, i still feel like its not good enough so i decide to render it more (which i am still learning cause i never render my drawing before, always base colors with no render) with the help of this video (link : digital painting basics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6-NhdEPKGk)

(Fig 2.3 - Before Rendering 1)

(Fig 2.3.1 - Before Rendering 2)

(Fig 2.3.2 - Before Rendering 3)

(Fig 2.3.3 - Before Rendering 4)

before render

(Fig 2.4 - Rendered Art 1)

(Fig 2.4.1 - Rendered Art 2)

(Fig 2.4.2 - Rendered Art 3)

(Fig 2.4.3 - Rendered Art 4)

(Fig 2.4.4 - Rendered Art 5)

after render

Final Outcome

(Fig 3.1 - Final outcome of Self portrait [Please refresh to replay the GIF))

For my final outcome, i made a short sort of animation of myself whenever i look in the mirror, visualizing what i see and what i feel whenever i look at myself. my main goal of this illustration is to show how there are voices in my head saying bad things and stuff about how i hate myself and how i look, how im always lacking and never been good enough.

My idea when i create this face portrait is because i have been trying my best to heal from trauma and how hard it is to fight my own intrusive thoughts, i am still trying my best to gain back my self confidence. but its always hard for me to do so, but even after all these struggles, i am still on a journey to be comfortable in my own body, and i hope in the future i will heal from all these traumas and find my true happiness.

Feedbacks

when i showed my sketch to Mr.Charles he said that my sketch are interesting and explained to me what self-portrait means, and i continued with my sketch and Mr.Charles advised me to make sure the eye is more visible and clearly seen. after that i asked if i can turn my illustrations into a GIF and Mr.Charles said to proceed and i start to continue with the rendering and animating, i am happy how it turns out at the end, not the best but happy regardless !

Reflection

Honestly speaking, i enjoy doing this project and its because i can finally show and explain how i feel through my art and although i still struggle with drawing, i'm glad that this project exists so i can practice more with a goal. Because all these times whenever i draw, I just never know what to draw and feel lost about what to do and get a lot of pressure from family and friends who are way more expert than me in art, in this piece i'm glad i can draw freely what i want and what i need to do.

Actually, i didn't struggle much with this project because i already know what i want to draw and what my goal is for this self-portrait and, honestly? I'm proud of this one, it may not be the best, but it is a great one. I also get to learn more because i asked my friends who does art for advice and this is a really great learning experience for me and i hope we can do more projects like this! Maybe in the future, if there is another self-portrait 'll draw a happier version of myself, i hope-!