*Before the invert
*Invert
*Portrait
*Portrait Inverted
During the course of an artist’s career, they are eventually tempted into creating a self-portrait. Whether the reasoning is that of Vincent Van Gogh creating self portraits as a key to being able to create the forms of men and women or the reasoning being an assignment, self portraits offer the same opportunity; Self portraits give artists the opportunity to actually go into depth about themselves and how they see themselves.
I chose an image of myself not wearing my glasses, however still having them incorporated in the picture because my glasses are a huge part of who I am because of the simple fact that I wear them almost every minute of everyday except for when I’m sleeping. I have them placed on my forehead to sort of emphasize the “four eyes” nickname that is normally placed upon people who wear glasses. I really like the image because the light that is being used has the appearance of some sort of interesting aura that just adds character to the image.
Although I was fond of this image, I didn’t want to keep it the way it was because I wanted to make it stand out a bit more, so I decided to goof around with it on PhotoShop. I played around with several different adjustments until I landed on invert. I knew I wanted to do this inverted image for the charcoal portrait because not only was it an interesting challenge, but it says a lot about my character. Being that I joke around a lot in a somewhat mean fashion, some of my peers believe that the main attributes of my character consists of aggression, cruelty and genuine dislike towards most people. However, my actual character is the complete opposite. This portrait is basically my way of saying that the way I appear isn’t necessarily the way I am.
The primary challenge of doing this portrait was the details, big and small, that was placed onto the hair. Ironically, although a challenge, I believe the hair is one of the main strengths in this portrait since I put so much time in getting it as accurate as possible. I’m particularly proud of the small detail that revolves around the portrait that I was able to pull off, such as the reflection of the macbook in the right lens and the appearance of the right hinge of the glasses.
Overall, I’m very proud of the way this piece came out. This project contributed to my growth as an artist because it allowed me to work on something that I’ve had trouble with since the beginning of the year, which is shading. Due to the many shade changes, I had to adapt in order for the piece to match up with the reference photo. I’m glad I went with the photo I chose because it gave me a challenge that strengthened me in what used to be a weakness.
Shanelle Chinnery 