Self Portrait
French Jazza (DrawWithJazza)
This picture entitled "Make it Frencher" is inspired by a Youtuber by the name of Jazza, from his lets play of "passepartout"
I chose to reverse the colours of the sweater and scarf to show my brighter fun side while also keeping the likeness of the Artist.
This image was inspired by Gustave Courbet's piece entitled "the desperate man"
I decided to involve my hands in the piece much like Courbet and kept the disgruntled look on my face. I call my piece "the perplexced teenager"
The Process
I started with sectioning my portrait using a grid method which would aid me in scaling, as you can tell I wasn't able to follow this method very well and my proportions were significantly larger than they should be which can be improved on in future pieces. my eyes and lips appear to be stretched and misshaped along with my fingers too big and brows too large. I end up rectifying this in the painting stage.
I began painting by blocking in the basic shapes and focused on getting the base colour and hues on the page. I attempted texture with the brows by using short dashes similar to that of Courbet in his piece. I neglected to add in the colours of the jumper and the eyes which I believe now I should have added as I would have been able to stop some of my later mistakes and rectify them quicker on in the process.
Then I moved on to adding the cooler tones to the piece, I also start adding detail and smaller highlights, building up more colour in the skintones and building up the warmer/red tones within it. I happen to neglect the shoulders and background.
Then onto adding more colour. My first pass was quickly finished due to my use of acrylic. I chose acrylic as I was aware it was a medium I needed to work on using but also due to its opacity and quick drying time. In Courbets piece it was an oil painting and due to the slow drying nature of it I opted for acrylic to get similar results.
My initial piece was finished but I saw some glaring flaws, the lighting wasnt as dramatic as Courbets piece, I hadnt blended the highlights and lowlights evenly enough and though I got the colour of my skin almost correct my hair had more grey undertones and less of a burnt sienna look. I attempted to use a type of divisionsim to portray the look of Courbets marks made with a pallett knife but it managed to look more flat due to my little varied colour.
On my next try I sectioned my face with red meaning highlights and blue being lowlights as an easier way to know where to paint. I was attempting to really heavily push my values much like Courbet did.
Ive found that studying Courbets piece allowed me to realise that pushing my values and creating a piece that isn't extremely clean looking can lead to something very effective that can invoke alot of emotion. I decided to use the acrylic as almost a watercolour in places where the tone needed to be darker such as under the left eye to create the grit and rushed looking aesthetic Courbet portrays in his. (Research here) Seeing that not everything needs to be seen as clean allowed me to really experiment not just in the medium but with how I used it; e.g watering acrylic down to a watercolour like state. I feel as though initially I could have used light to my advantage as well as dark to be able to almost cheat the amount of detail in the piece much like the way Courbet fills in a majority of the hair in plain black to forgo adding major detail to the hair. Overall I like the effect my final piece gave and enjoyed working with acrylics more than expected.
