bare minimum
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Self portrait, 1901 By Pablo Picasso |
InspirationFor my self portrait, the artist that I wanted to use was Lucian Freud, a British painter who was involved within the Expressionism art movement. With most of his artworks, Freud incorporated the ideas of anatomy and psychology to make all of subjects (even the most beautiful ones) ugly and this stayed consistent through the many years as an painter. Freud owes much to the early-20th-century Expressionists. His pronounced, expressive strokes recall Egon Schiele and Edvard Munch, and the tilted perspective and anthropomorphic depictions of chairs, shoes, and other inanimate objects bring to mind Vincent van Gogh. Once getting some understanding as to who Freud was and the specific style of paintings he created, I immediately knew that this was something I wanted to include within my self portrait. Understanding that Freud purposely made each of his figures ugly (in a sense) I knew I wanted to include this idea. The reason as o why I want to include this in my self portrait because the theme surrounding each and every one of my artworks is "Understand who I am" and purposely making myself ugly I feel would achieve just that. I want this piece to hone onto the fact that I have a lot insecurities and I hardly ever just appreciate the skin that I am in. I want people to understand that this is how I see myself, someone who is ugly.
Another artist that I was inspired by was Pablo Picasso when he was in his Blue Period. During this period, it was widely known that many of his were mostly done in monochromatic colors (in this case blue and blue-greens). His Blue Period works, seemed to reflect his experience of relative poverty and instability, depicting beggars, street urchins, the old and frail and the blind. This period's starting point is not really certain but it may have begun in Spain in the spring of 1901, or in Paris. In choosing austere color and sometimes doleful subject matter - prostitutes, beggars and drunks are frequent subjects - Picasso was influenced by a journey through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas, who took his life at the LHippodrome Cafe in Paris, France by shooting himself in the right temple on February 17, 1901. The reason why I am using Picasso's blue period as an inspiration for my self portrait is to portray the fact the insecurities that I have really bring me down and stop me from doing things that I wish to do. In all honesty, it makes me sad to think of the things I do not like about myself which is why I am using the same technique as Picasso-using monochromatic colors. With both artists that I used as inspiration, each were part of the art movement Expressionism. This art movement began in the early 20th century as a reaction to dehumanizing effect of large cities and industrialization. The goal of their art was to emphasize the extreme expressive properties of art forms in order to explore subjunctive emotions and psychological truth. |
{Canvas}
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When creating my self portrait, I created my own canvas. First thing I did was to create the skeleton of the canvas, meaning that I put together the frame of the canvas (which was 3ft by 3ft wooden frames connected together). Once creating the frame, I then rolled out a decent of amount of canvas and cut the amount I wanted to use out. Cutting the canvas material, I began to fold the edges of the canvas cloth over the edges of the frame, starting on one edge at a time. With the first edge I folded over, I grabbed the staple gun and stapled the canvas cloth to the frame so that it would not budge. I repeated this all four sides of the wooden frame.
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Similarities- I used blue hues such as Picasso did during his Blue period
- There is a build up of texture |
Differences- It does not resemble that much of Freud's artwork however the technique of building color/texture was used
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