Painting my self portrait - Part 4

Even though I'd already spent a lot of time working on my self portrait, at the beginning of the next art class (one of the last we would have to work on the project), there was still a huge part of my portrait missing - the black right side. What could I do with it? I had a basic idea: I wanted to write the names of all the countries I had lived in with oil pastels, and then paint over them with acrylic. Since the oil pastels repel water, the writing would be quite visible and the background would still be black.

This time I experimented with the new technique before using it on my actual painting. It seemed to work alright, so I wrote down lines of the countries I'd lived in going down. My basic idea was to have one line of text for each year I spent in the country, but actually I gave all the countries at least two lines because it was easier to read. So basically, the right side looks like this:

Mongolia Mongolia Mongolia Mongolia Mongolia Mongolia Mongolia Mongolia Mongolia Mongolia
Mongolia Mongolia Mongolia Mongolia Mongolia Mongolia Mongolia Mongolia Mongolia Mongolia
Thailand Thailand Thailand Thailand Thailand Thailand Thailand Thailand Thailand Thailand
Thailand Thailand Thailand Thailand Thailand Thailand Thailand Thailand Thailand Thailand
Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pa
Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pak
Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pa
Salvador Salvador Salvador Salvador Salvador Salvador Salvador Salvador Salvador Salvador Salvador Salvador Salvador Salvador Salvador Salvador Salvador Salvador Salvador Salvador
Rwanda Rwanda Rwanda Rwanda Rwanda Rwanda Rwanda Rwanda Rwanda Rwanda Rwanda Rwanda Rwanda Rwanda Rwanda Rwanda Rwanda Rwanda Rwanda Rwanda Rwanda Rwanda
Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru Peru

After writing everything in oil pastels, I started covering it with heavily diluted acrylic. This is where things started going wrong. First of all, I found that the kind of pastels I used to write "Pakistan" and "Peru" were soluble in water, so they started fading out and leaving orange and blue streaks on the page. Second, the water was so diluted that you could very easily see the brushstrokes and the color wasn't even at all. I added more and more coats and the same thing that happened with my face happened with the black part...there was too much water and the paper started coming off. I stopped adding layers but it still didn't look right.

I continued working on my project at home. Once my self portrait was a little more dry, I added layers again. This didn't really fix things. The more water I used, the more evident the brushstrokes were, and the least obvious the text was. Finally, I decided to go for a more subtle effect and covered the letters with thicker black paint. This made the text harder to read but it also evened out the color, so overall I think that was an improvement and partly fixed my mistake.

The problem was that without the writing, the right side looked a little boring. There was still one of my interests that I hadn't expressed, computers. I decided to have that in my self portrait by pasting binary code (the very basic code that makes up computer.). I printed a lot of binary code, tore off little pieces and glued them on my artwork. Since they stood out a lot, I painted them in black and arranged them so that it looked like they were flying away, out of grasp.

Finally, I added writing with the leftover binary code. It was inspired by one of my favorite books, the Gemma Doyle trilogy, where the heroine says this at some point:

"Do you ever feel that way?"
"Lonely?"
"Restless. As if you haven't really met yourself yet. As is you'd passed yourself once in the fog, and your heart leapt--'Ah! There I am! I've been missing that piece!' But it happens too fast, and then that part of you disappears into the fog again. And you spend the rest of your days looking for it." (Bray, The Sweet Far Thing)

I often really do feel like I don't know who I am and maybe I never will. Every time I think I have found out something about myself, something happens and I realize that's not exactly who I am yet. So on my artwork, I wrote:

Tell me who I am

Because there are times where I really wish someone would.




Bibliography

"Daler Rowney Oil pastels." No date. Online image. Jerry Artsrama. 29 Sep 2009 <"http://www.jerrysartarama.com/images/resized/386x450/PRODUCTS/PASTELS/Oil_PASTELS/DALER_ROWNEY/0077653000000-ST-03-Daler-Rowney-Oil-Pastels.jpg">

"Acrylic paint." No date. Online image. eHow. 29 Sep 2009 <"http://i.ehow.com/images/GlobalPhoto/Articles/2285887/paint-main_Full.jpg">

Bray, Libba. Gemma Doyle: The Sweet Far Thing. Reader's Circle: Jersey, 2008.

Painting my self portrait - Part 3

Since I was mostly done with the mixed media, during the next art class I started working with paint. Here I also used mixed media: acrylic, gouache (also called poster color), watercolors, and oil pastels. To be honest, I can't really see the difference between acrylic, gouache and watercolors, but to the eyes of a connoisseur they probably are not all that similar.

Using my photograph as reference, I started painting the face with an undercoat of yellow gouache I would then cover with white to get different shades. This went a little wrong though, as the gouache was very dry and would only give very light yellow. I had to apply a lot of coats hence a lot of water. The paper couldn't absorb it all and started wrinkling as the top also started coming off, which didn't look all that great. Meanwhile, the yellow was still a little pale and the brushstrokes showed. I added more and more coats and my face became more and more yellow, till I realized no amount of white would entirely cover it. Ms. Sudra told me to wait till it dried so that we could then iron it out a little. My face ended up being quite a mess and I still haven't completely fixed it.

After finishing the face, I started working on the hair. I used watercolors and this step was quite easy, because I had drawn all the highlights in the hair when using the projector. I thought the strands would be very hard to draw but that turned out to be easier than I expected. The problem I realized at the end, though, is that I can't erase the original pencil drawing of the hair since it is covered with paint. You can't really notice it if you look at it from a distance, but it could be better once you get near. I guess there's not much I can do about that one anyway. The rest went fine.

I then used the oil pastels to color the rest of the coat. I wasn't very confident with oil pastels in the past, but last year I got a lot of practice with them and ended up improving a lot. I first used red pastels for everything except the coat highlights, where I added white and smudged the corners a little. The white pastel was a different kind from the red, so they didn't blend as well as I would've wanted them to, but the result was still alright. I liked using pastels for this part. Another problem I had was with the other part of the coat, the one plunged in darkness. I was gonna use a black pastel to paint the shadows but as soon as I started using it, I realized it was actually dark blue. That looks a bit off in my final painting.

Many of the errors with the paints happened because I didn't have enough practice with them. To fix them, I could have practiced more before painting on my actual portrait. The other thing is that maybe the paper we used was a little thin for a mixed media work. Ms Sudra said they would use stronger paper next year...hopefully, things will get a little better after I iron my work.

Painting my self portrait - Part 2

Today, we started working in Art on painting the self portrait using mixed medias. At first I didn't really want to go too far astray from regular painting materials, but after Ms. Sudra showed us a video on this artist called Vik Muniz, I realized mixed media could be very interesting. One idea he had I really liked was to draw clouds in the sky using clouds! In an airplane, he made cartoon looking clouds with the smoke trail he left behind. While I wouldn't really be able to do that, I still thought it was an interesting idea and started thinking about more varied mixed media I could use.

Here are a few of the materials I used so far:


Torn pieces of old homework - as I said in an earlier post, I love reading and I wanted to have some sort of text in my painting. I didn't want to cut out pages from my books, though, so I used scrap paper, in this case old homework. Cutting up homework felt great too :)
I cut it up with the paper cutter into long horizontal strips, then put a lot of glue on the paper and tore off small pieces to cover it all up. I went one There were three very different shades in my arm as I painted it, so I used different looking homework for each (Chinese, History and English). I painted one zone after the other and coated it all with glue when I was done.
I'm not sure if I want to paint over the text, which would make it blend it more but also look less like text, or if I'll just leave it like that. It looks like I'm wearing a white glove, which is quite nice as well.

Piece of cloth - While looking for different media, I found this piece of cloth that looked exactly like the coat I'm wearing in my picture. I thought about using it to paint the whole coat, but the problem was that there were some areas of it that were overlapped by hair, and I didn't know which media I would do hair in. So I only used actual cloth for the sleeve. I cut out a small piece and glued it so that the cloth would still have folds in it, approximately at the same places as the folds in the original picture. I then found a small piece of white napkin, which I added at the top of the sleeve. While it’s not present in the original picture, it looks interesting and provides a transition from the red coat to the white hands. The napkin also reminds me of Christmas, my favorite holiday.

Colored sand – I had a set of colored sand to create mandalas at home and I thought it fit into this project nicely. Colored sand has an exotic feel to it, which reminds me of my travels. I started by coloring my lip with it. I first painted the lip with glue and then just spilled some sand over it. I shook the paper and some of the sand stuck on the lips and the leftover just fell off the sheet. For the eyes, I decided to experiment a little bit by mixing the different colors of sand. It took a little longer but it was really fun and allowed me to experiment with lots of different shades. The only problem I had while using the colored sand was that I shook the sand off the wrong way – there was still some glue left on my arm, and some of the sand stuck on it, making it look as if I was bleeding. I shook it off and added a little bit of torn homework to cover the areas that had been changed the most, but a little bit still remains.

At the beginning of this unit, I didn't really want to work with too many mixed media because I thought the end result might look a little strange. However, I realized that as long as you stay somewhat subtle, mixed media can really add something to your portrait. It's a very interesting way of showing who you are. The materials above were easy to work with and I think they all looked great at the end of the lesson.

Painting my self portrait - Part 1

Since I chose my picture, I started working on the actual self portrait. Since this is a mixed unit between Art and IT, most of this work was done in art class, since we were documenting the process in IT.

The first step was to draw our picture on the paper. For this project, we didn't actually have to draw it by ourselves, we used a projector to display the edited picture on a piece of paper and from then on just copied the lines (aha! that's why the portraits from last year looked so great - I thought their class was much more artistic than ours). I really liked that, because we all started on an equal basis. I would've liked my self portrait a lot less if I'd had to draw it entirely by myself because my drawing skills would've made it look less good from the beginning.

Drawing from the projector was fun but actually harder than I expected. I always use gradients in my computer artworks, but the problem with those is that you don't really get "lines" to draw across. My final design, which was already much simpler than other ones I had in mind, still took me a long time to draw. I didn't know what to include, so I just drew every line I managed to see, including highlights, shadows, etc. I was very happy with the result, though - I wish I could actually draw like that...

My self portrait has officially crossed the border between virtual and real. I feel a little strange having such a big picture of me somewhere, but it was interesting to use the projector. Maybe I could also try that at home, as practice for actually drawing things!

Final design

Looking back at my design specifications, I realized some of them were really hard to check and some that should have been included I hadn't thought about. My favorite designs were Design 11, 10 and 9. But when I looked at them, I realized a few things. First of all, it was very hard for me to tell if they matched the design specification "This image should show more about myself than I think it does", as the whole point of that specification is that I don't know if it's working. While I think that is an interesting thing to think about, it shouldn't be an actual design specification as it is really hard to tell.
The second problem with my specifications I realized when looking at my three favorite designs was that all of them were incredibly hard to draw. They had a myriad of little details such as lines, highlights, gradients, focused black and white, inner glow, etc. that I could just not draw by myself. One design specification I should've added is "Is it possible to draw this edited photograph?"
I asked my art teacher, Ms. Sudra, for advice, and she said her favorite was my very first design. I realized that it did match all of my design specifications, even the hidden meaning one, and the only thing that bothered me was that the right side of the image was really messy:

So I simply used Photoshop and made the whole right hand side completely black, which actually gives me more creativity with the mixed media as I can add a lot of things in that part, different materials, writing, etc.:

Design specifications checklist - Final design

• The original picture must be altered in a photo editing program - yes
  
• There can't be anyone else than yourself on the photograph - yes
  
• The image must express who you are - yes
  
• I must be able to recognize myself on the portrait - yes
  
• The photograph must be one I have taken myself - yes
  
• The final work should be neat and completely finished - yes
  
• It should be the result of me working at my hardest - yes
  
• I should be proud of the result - yes
  
• This image should show more about myself than I think it does - yes
  
• It should be visually pleasant - yes
• I can draw this edited photograph - yes

Overall, my final design is the only one that really matches all of the design specifications. I'm the only person on the image, which is a very simple photograph that gives me lots of freedom with the mixed media. It's easy to see that the picture has been altered in a photo editing program and the picture has been taken by myself. You can see me clearly as there is nothing else on the photograph.
I think that as it is, my final design represents me less than some other ones but that's because the edited picture is only the basis for my actual portraiture technology unit. A mistake I made in many of my designs is that I forgot which kind of mixed media I could use, thinking only of the image itself and how nice it looked. My final design will allow me to show a lot about myself through the mixed media rather than its composition, but it's still me. By going with a simple background and colors, I bring focus to my expression and clothes, which are a very important part of me. As I said earlier, my mom thought that represented the two sides of me, very shy or very open at times, something I didn't think of but have to agree with. It's even more obvious now that I blacked out the right side, so this image says things about myself I hadn't even thought of.
The final design is pleasant to look at: even though it's not a complete self portrait yet, it's neat and I'm proud of it, which are two more of my design specifications. Fixing the black zone improved it a lot. Finally, it's one of the only designs I can actually draw, which really plays in its favor. I think my final design will really work and I am sure about my decision.

Design brief

Through my research and brainstorming, I have been trying to answer my research questions of the beginning of this unit.

· What are some of the different ways I could present my portrait?

According to my design specifications, there's a number of different ways I could show myself. On this blog I already have a number of posts with edited pictures. Although I'm not quite sure which one I'm choosing, those displayed match with my basic design specifications:

• All of the pictures are altered in a photo editing program.


• I'm the only person on the image: on some of them there's a painting, but the person in it is also me.


• Most of the pictures represent a side of me, some more than others - those that didn't have much to do with me I started eliminating.


• I'm easy to recognize on the portrait


• It's a picture that I have taken myself with a webcam.


• As far as the photo editing is concerned, the painting is so far quite neat.


• I really like all of the designs and I think I've worked on them at my hardest.


• They are all pleasant to look at.

All of my designs are ways I thought of to represent myself. Once I am done with the portrait, there's a number of ways I could present it. One of my design specification tests is whether or not I would be willing to show this to other people.

I was very interested by the portraits the tenth graders did last year, so like them, I think it would be nice to show the future tenth graders what my portrait is like. I also wonder what complete strangers who just know me by name would learn about me through my portrait, so maybe I could have it up in a corridor with a title above it "An image is worth a thousand words". I'm not sure if people would understand it, but I think if not a 1000, there's quite a few words this image would say about me. I could have a paper and a marker next to it asking what people think about me looking at this image.

Even though I would be happy to have some people see my painting, in the end it's about me and I think it belongs in my room. This is also a part of me - my room has lots of things up on the walls, and I wonder if my painting would take a somewhat different meaning when it's next to other things that represent me. I could also hang it on my door, where more people can see it.

· What materials would be suitable for my self portrait?

Since this is a mixed media artwork, there's a lot of materials I could work with. At the beginning, I just wanted to be traditional and use paint but after a little bit of research, I found a lot of creative artists. I want to keep a good balance between representing me and being visually pleasant - candy wrappers are a part of me, but wouldn't necessarily look good on an image. It's probably more efficient for me to work backwards by finding interesting materials and seeing if they have something to do with my personality.

• Torn out paper: I read quite a lot and really enjoy books, and I'm also a visual learner - so paper with writing on it would be very interesting. What would best represent me would probably be torn out pages of my favorite books, but they're my favorite books for a good reason and I don't want to cut them up. Using old scrap paper and other printed papers would probably get the message across too. I've seen a lot of mixed media from the past years that used torn paper and they always look good. One example in particular is "Pictures of Paper", a series of paintings by Vik Muniz depicting entire scenes with torn out paper. I was really impressed by its realism (Muniz).


• Rice : People are always surprised when I tell them, but I am a quarter Vietnamese. This Asian side of me could be expressed by rice, which I also love to eat.


• Textiles: Clothing has become a more important part of my life over the last few years, and I really like the coat I'm wearing in the image. It would look nice if it was made with real cloth. My art teacher, Ms. Sudra, also suggested that I use this (Sudra).


• Origami: I do a lot of origami when I have time and it would look very interesting. I don't know which sort of design I could do, but maybe I could group this with another interest of mine by folding a book or a computer, for example.

• Souvenirs: I have travelled a lot, which has really shaped my personality. I want to include some sort of memory from each place I lived in that I can remember (Peru, Rwanda, Salvador, Pakistan, Thailand and Mongolia) but I'm not quite sure about what kind of materials would represent that best.
  

· How can I best show my personality and interests in one image?
I don't think my portrait should necessarily be one that reads instantly - instead, there should be a lot of materials that represent some side of me and that some might not be able to decipher. I want this portrait to be a mystery that makes people think.

I looked at a lot of amazing self portraits, but I'm still not sure what makes one especially great. Things such as the pose and the background may actually tell a lot more than symbols written in the background. For example, a portrait with the person naturally shying away from the camera demonstrates a quiet personality while someone smiling might be really bright. Here are a few self portraits from the Wired Self Portrait Contest that I found really interesting:

Even though this image is very simple, it immediately tells you this person is quite a happy one to be around. He takes the environment seriously and has a good sense of humor.


On the other side, this image is much sadder and the person's expression tells you that he has been through a lot. You can nearly see his long history behind the lines of his face and the depths of his eyes.


Both the posture and the background of this picture indicate this woman is rather energetic one. The colors are very bright, and the title of the picture Run Lola Run tells me she probably likes movies a lot. Despite all this extravagance, the way she's not looking at the camera shows she might be quite shy on the inside.

This man seems a lot more eccentric and crazy than the other three. He may have the sort of witty humor that would make him do such a strange image using gas masks, but all of the traits I interpret from the portraits above are after all just suppositions. It's interesting to see all that I can think from just one image, compared to what the artist itself sought to express.

Mixed media gives even more choice to represent yourself. I particularly like this image, which to me seems like the author doesn't really know who he is himself. That's a very clever way to display his mixed media artwork, although I can't really do the same with mine.

· How can I make sure this project really represents me?

Although I think it is important that I think of who I truly am, I also believe that the portrait will naturally represent me as I am the one making it. Unconsciously, even if I didn't try to make it like me, the portrait would end up representing many aspects of me. However, this portrait gives me an interesting question - what is the dominant side of my personality?
Sometimes I feel like I'm a lot of different people at the same time and I don't know who to best represent in this portrait. Maybe I don't have to choose just one part of me to show but instead a little bit of each. I could divide the portrait into areas - shy Sarah, happy Sarah, extravagant Sarah, mad Sarah...the thing I'm worried about is that I have so many different sides I can't possibly show them all.
One test I have come up with at the end of the unit is to ask people to fill in 10 things they think about me in general and then 10 things the portrait leads them to think. I can then see how many match, and wheter or not my photograph does really show who I am.

In which ways can I use technology to make art?
I have been using Photoshop and other digital art technology tools for many years and I have come to truly consider them as art. We once had a debate with a few friends about what art was and my final opinion was that something becomes art when people have thought about more than the utilitarian side when designing the object. A plain concrete block is grey and boring because when it was made, its creators only wanted it to do its function; it's not art. A beautiful shirt was intended to be worn, but also to be somewhat pleasant to look at; in my opinion, it therefore becomes a sort of art. A photograph or a painting is only meant to look beautiful and so it is uncontestably art, even more than the two others.
When thinking in this perspective, how does a computer wallpaper or a poster made on a computer not count as art? DeviantArt, a digital art website, has a number of amazing computer artworks that in my opinion are just as pleasant to look at as many famous paintings.
The most interesting thing that has arisen in computer art in the recent years is in my opinion how the virtual has started meeting the real once again. Our project will incorporate technology into the actual hard work as we get to trace from an original edited photograph. Even though that makes the work a lot easier, there are some effects from computer artworks we wouldn't be able to reflect by just tracing them. I had to give up on two images I had chosen as my final piece because they were too hard to draw, since they used a lot of gradients and other subtle effects that are quite hard to trace. I could further use technology in this artwork by printing and pasting images that fully have those type of gradients.

Bibliography
Muniz, Vik. "Pictures of Paper." Vik Muniz. 2008. Knowawall, Web. 15 Sep 2009

Sudra, Anna. Art lecture. International School of Ulaanbaatar. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. 3 Sep 2009.

Sudra, Anna. "Portraiture Technology". Powerpoint presentation for MYP Art, International School of Ulaanbaatar. Sep 2009.

Killen, Marie. Run Lola Run. 2008. 18 Sep 2009

O'Mara, Kevin. Typical Morning. 2008. 18 Sep 2009

Amster, Sam. Bad Hair Day. 2008. 18 Sep 2009

Jensen, Mikael. Me 2. 2008. 18 Sep 2009

Jennifer, Sloan. Pleated Spiral. 1997. 18 Sep 2009

Another design

You know, choosing is the hardest part of photo editing. You use websites like PhotoFunia or Picnik which allow you to make tons of pictures very quickly, and then suddenly you have 15 pictures to choose from and you love all of them. Here is yet another design I really like.

Design specifications checklist - Design 11

• The original picture must be altered in a photo editing program - yes
  
• There can't be anyone else than yourself on the photograph - yes (there's three of me instead :)
  
• The image must express who you are - yes
  
• I must be able to recognize myself on the portrait - yes
  
• The photograph must be one I have taken myself - yes (entirely)
  
• The final work should be neat and completely finished - yes
  
• It should be the result of me working at my hardest - yes
  
• I should be proud of the result - yes
  
• This image should show more about myself than I think it does - yes
  
• It should be visually pleasant - yes

One thing I feel is very important about my personality is that I have many sides that I know all of my friends haven't seen. I have changed and grown a lot over the past few years as well, so I felt like one picture wasn't enough to express all of that. I looked through my folder of pictures (old Facebook display pictures, mostly) and found two others that seemed quite interesting: one where I'm quite crazy, wearing ninja clothes, and another one where I look very shy, that I took nearly two years ago.

Using Photoshop, I took my original picture and looked for places where I could add the two new ones - in the image, there was a frame and a mirror. I played with opacity, saturation and other settings until it looked like the image in the frame and the reflection in the mirror were my two pictures. However, I didn't really like the ninja one - it was too bright, too much of an attention grabber in the image. So I went to Photofunia and incorporated the ninja image into the book effect. I just loved the result.

Finally, I took my edited image from Photoshop and edited it on Picnik. I cooled the colors and added the snow effect, as well as a light vignette and a black and white focus. My two other portraits that are in the image aren't very obvious, but that's the way I wanted them to be. So in the end, I used all Photofunia, Photoshop and Picnik for this design.

More editing going on

Today I kept on editing the same picture of me. I find it interesting how many different feelings and effects you can have from one original picture. My first try was on Picnik, a website that really interested me yesterday. Although I still like it, I think it's quickly limited when you have a specific idea in mind. The number of premium functions for which you have to pay also frustrated me, but I still got something out of it.

My new image is really different as it uses cool colors only - I was wearing a winter coat, so I decided to be in the snow. This picture matches my basic design criteria (alone on the image, picture taken by myself) and I like how it's somewhat Christmas-y but not a very happy composition. Sometimes I feel like it's snowing inside of me , but no one really sees that - this is what I like about this picture, outside its appearance. But for my self portrait, I want to represent something a little happier. I also wanted to add some text but the fonts were too limited. Here goes:

Design specifications checklist - Design 3

• The original picture must be altered in a photo editing program - yes
  
• There can't be anyone else than yourself on the photograph - yes
  
• The image must express who you are - ??
  
• I must be able to recognize myself on the portrait - yes
  
• The photograph must be one I have taken myself - yes
  
• The final work should be neat and completely finished - yes
  
• It should be the result of me working at my hardest - yes
  
• I should be proud of the result - yes
  
• This image should show more about myself than I think it does - ??
  
• It should be visually pleasant - yes

Using Picknik, I did another very different image where I used symbols. I'm the only person on the image, and I took this picture myself, so this matches the basic design criteria. However, I don't know if this picture really represents me. It took me a lot of time to do, and I like the result, but I can't really identify myself to it. The colors are too vibrant, too happy - it looks like some sort of advertisement. I asked a few of my friends and although they thought I can be really happy at times, and that the mysterious expression provides a nice contrast with the warm colors, they did agree this wasn't completely me.

Design specifications checklist - Design 4

• The original picture must be altered in a photo editing program - yes
  
• There can't be anyone else than yourself on the photograph - yes
  
• The image must express who you are - not really
  
• I must be able to recognize myself on the portrait - yes
  
• The photograph must be one I have taken myself - yes
  
• The final work should be neat and completely finished - yes
  
• It should be the result of me working at my hardest - yes
  
• I should be proud of the result - yes
  
• This image should show more about myself than I think it does - ??
  
• It should be visually pleasant - yes

Finally, I went to an old photo editing website I have known for a very long time, PhotoFunia. When I first visited it, all it did was give you pictures with a hole somewhere so you could add your own photo. It's changed a lot - now all you have to do is upload the picture on the website and it gives you a wonderfully edited image. Now, the thing is that you tend to end up with tons of edited pictures, since it's so fast :)

I'll just upload a few of my favorites.

Design specifications checklist - Design 5

• The original picture must be altered in a photo editing program - yes
  
• There can't be anyone else than yourself on the photograph - no
  
• The image must express who you are - yes
  
• I must be able to recognize myself on the portrait - yes
  
• The photograph must be one I have taken myself - no
  
• The final work should be neat and completely finished - yes
  
• It should be the result of me working at my hardest - yes
  
• I should be proud of the result - yes
  
• This image should show more about myself than I think it does - no
  
• It should be visually pleasant - yes

I really don't like it when other people take pictures of me without my knowledge, so this image is a little bit ironic - "No pictures" on a picture. I really liked that. I haven't taken the whole photograph, but the woman reading her newspaper is not really too important, so I think this still goes with my design specification. This tells a lot about me but I'm not all that happy about the fact there's words on the images. I'd like my self portrait to be more of a puzzle and writing like this feels a little obvious.

Design specifications checklist - Design 6

• The original picture must be altered in a photo editing program - yes
  
• There can't be anyone else than yourself on the photograph - yes
  
• The image must express who you are - yes
  
• I must be able to recognize myself on the portrait - yes
  
• The photograph must be one I have taken myself - no
  
• The final work should be neat and completely finished - yes
  
• It should be the result of me working at my hardest - yes
  
• I should be proud of the result - yes
  
• This image should show more about myself than I think it does - ??
  
• It should be visually pleasant - yes

This one feels to me like it's saying there's an infinity of persons. Again, people in Mongolia only know one aspect of me - this picture reminds me of that aspect of my personality. I also just like the composition and the colors of the artwork. The problem is that one of my design specification is that it has to be a picture taken by me, and in this image what I really like is the surrounding photograph around my poster. This would be really hard to draw as well, so I think it's a nice edited picture but wouldn't really work as a self portrait.

Design specifications checklist - Design 7

• The original picture must be altered in a photo editing program - yes
  
• There can't be anyone else than yourself on the photograph - no
  
• The image must express who you are - not really
  
• I must be able to recognize myself on the portrait - yes
  
• The photograph must be one I have taken myself - not really
  
• The final work should be neat and completely finished - yes
  
• It should be the result of me working at my hardest - yes
  
• I should be proud of the result - yes
  
• This image should show more about myself than I think it does - yes
  
• It should be visually pleasant - yes

Okay, I have no idea how this one could even represent me. But a graffiti? Come on. Maybe I like this picture because it kind of makes up for my lack of risk taking - I would never draw a graffiti in my life. That's what my friends said when I showed them the picture and I agree with them. One of my design specification is for my picture to say more about myself than I planned on saying myself, which is why I'm so fond of this picture. However, one of the very basic design specification of the self portrait is that I must be alone on the picture. This isn't really the case...I could always edit out the man and replace him by a simple wall, although that would make the image less interesting.

Design specifications checklist - Design 8

• The original picture must be altered in a photo editing program - yes
  
• There can't be anyone else than yourself on the photograph - yes
  
• The image must express who you are - not really
  
• I must be able to recognize myself on the portrait - yes
  
• The photograph must be one I have taken myself - yes
  
• The final work should be neat and completely finished - yes
  
• It should be the result of me working at my hardest - yes
  
• I should be proud of the result - yes
  
• This image should show more about myself than I think it does - ??
  
• It should be visually pleasant - yes

Wanted - dead or alive. I wish I was worth $9999...this image looks really interesting and there's some irony behind it. I'm alone on the portrait and I really like this one. I would love to have a poster like that...Even though there's writing, the meaning of the picture is not obvious. I like the fact there's hidden meaning but I don't know if there's enough actual meaning to make this a successful self portrait.

Design specifications checklist - Design 9

• The original picture must be altered in a photo editing program - yes
  
• There can't be anyone else than yourself on the photograph - yes
  
• The image must express who you are - yes
  
• I must be able to recognize myself on the portrait - yes
  
• The photograph must be one I have taken myself - yes
  
• The final work should be neat and completely finished - yes
  
• It should be the result of me working at my hardest - yes
  
• I should be proud of the result - yes
  
• This image should show more about myself than I think it does - ??
  
• It should be visually pleasant - yes

This image reflects a really important aspect of my life, traveling. I'm pretty sure I would've been a completely different person if I'd lived in different countries or in the same place all my life, but I 'm not quite sure of how I could represent that in my self portrait. Postage stamps look great and I love the colors and vintage look of this image. It goes with all of my design specifications (picture taken by myself with no one else on it, represents me, looks nice, hidden meanings) and my only concern is that I'm a little small on the picture, but that could easily be fixed. I'll look much bigger when painting from the overhead anyway.

Design specifications checklist - Design 10

• The original picture must be altered in a photo editing program - yes
  
• There can't be anyone else than yourself on the photograph - yes
  
• The image must express who you are - yes
  
• I must be able to recognize myself on the portrait - yes
  
• The photograph must be one I have taken myself - not really
  
• The final work should be neat and completely finished - yes
  
• It should be the result of me working at my hardest - yes
  
• I should be proud of the result - yes
  
• This image should show more about myself than I think it does - probably not
  
• It should be visually pleasant - yes

This last picture from Photofunia is my personal favorite, as I've always really been into books. It seems to me like I'm about to step into a new, magical world. Ever since I read Inkheart, one of my favorite books about a girl that can make characters come out of the books when she reads aloud, I've wished I could step into books. I used a different image for this one because it matched the whole crazy mood a lot more, and it really looks like I'm a ninja character from the old book. This design says a lot about my hobbies, but I'm not sure where I could put some more information about myself. There isn't much space and it might be really hard to draw from the overhead. It matches all of my other design specifications, though.

Which one should I do for my project?

Two edited pictures

Although I don't know which images I will use for my final project just yet, the first thing to do is to think off my design specifications. There are a number of things my final portrait must include. Some of them have been given to us by our teacher:

• The portrait must use mixed medias
• The original picture must be altered in a photo editing program
• There can't be anyone else than yourself on the photograph
• The image must express who you are

Here are a few I would like to add for my own portrait. These are not essential design specifications but they would be desirable:

• I must be able to recognize myself on the portrait
• The photograph must be one I have taken myself
• The final work should be neat and completely finished
• It should be the result of me working at my hardest
• I should be proud of the result.
• This image should show more about myself than I think it does.
• It should be visually pleasant.

Some of these design specifications are very easy to check, but some require a longer test to make sure I have met my design specification. When I have finished my project, I will be completing the tests below:

• Am I using at least 5 different materials on my portrait?
• Am I able to explain the class the actual meaning of each material I have used?
• Can at least 5 persons see the difference between my original image and my altered version?
• Looking at it, is there anyone other than myself in the image? (that's an easy one...)
• If I show my image to 5 random people at the end of the unit, can they all tell that it's me on the picture?
• Is the photograph I'm using my own? Do I have the original file for it?
• Do I want to hang up this picture in my bedroom or am I not happy enough with the result?
• If I write ten things I think this picture tells about myself, would a list of 10 things written by two other people match or would they find some things I didn't try telling about myself but ended up doing anyway?
• If I ask 2 people a list of 10 words describing me in general, how many of those 10 words are also shown in my picture?
• Would I want to show this image to other people or am I not particularly proud of it?

With these tests, it should be pretty easy for me to tell if I have matched all of my design specifications.

I have started editing pictures already. My homework was to alter a photo of me on:
http://www.picnik.com/
http://www.splashup.com/
http://www.flauntr.com/
http://www.photoflex.com/
http://www.prixr.com/
and of course, the old faithful Photoshop.

Here are my two edited pictures! I did one on Picnik, a website I'd often heard about but more than seldom used, and Photoshop, my ordinary tool of choice when it comes to photo editing.

• The original picture must be altered in a photo editing program - YES
  
• There can't be anyone else than yourself on the photograph - YES
  
• The image must express who you are - ??
  
• I must be able to recognize myself on the portrait - YES
  
• The photograph must be one I have taken myself - YES
  
• The final work should be neat and completely finished - YES
  
• It should be the result of me working at my hardest - YES
  
• I should be proud of the result - YES
  
• This image should show more about myself than I think it does - ??
  
• It should be visually pleasant - YES

The great thing about Picnik is its simplicity of use. In just a few minutes, I was playing with filters and experimenting with crazy color combinations that would've been a lot longer to get anywhere else. I also liked that the website didn't require registration, a fastidious step in many cases. I chose a picture that I took a few days ago on my webcam. I really like taking portraits - and I have yet to find someone who knows exactly which expression or pose I want better than myself. I also can't pose in front of others, so if I want a decent picture, I need to take it on my own. This is why it's one of my design specifications.

After a little bit of fiddling around, here is what I got:

Design specifications checklist - Design 1

• The original picture must be altered in a photo editing program - yes
  
• There can't be anyone else than yourself on the photograph - yes
  
• The image must express who you are - yes
  
• I must be able to recognize myself on the portrait - yes
  
• The photograph must be one I have taken myself - yes
  
• The final work should be neat and completely finished - yes
  
• It should be the result of me working at my hardest - yes
  
• I should be proud of the result - yes
  
• This image should show more about myself than I think it does - yes
  
• It should be visually pleasant - yes

This is a very simple edited image that gives me freedom to express myself through the mixed media more than the original picture itself, but I think that through its simplicity it draws more attention to my own image. You can learn a lot more about someone through their expression than through more complicated edits around it, and I love how this image remains mysterious even after looking at it a number of times. The people I've asked all had different opinions about what it meant. For example, my mother said that it really showed two sides of me, very shy or very open at times. I hadn't really thought of that but I guess it's quite true.

The second image I did in Photoshop. It's a harder program but I have used it numerous times, so I get it to do what I want by now. This image was hard to work with because the background wasn't plain, but I really enjoyed working on it. The result is more surrealistic than the first one but it also represents me a lot better.

Design specifications checklist - Design 2

• The original picture must be altered in a photo editing program - yes
  
• There can't be anyone else than yourself on the photograph - yes
  
• The image must express who you are - yes
  
• I must be able to recognize myself on the portrait - yes
  
• The photograph must be one I have taken myself - yes
  
• The final work should be neat and completely finished - yes
  
• It should be the result of me working at my hardest - yes
  
• I should be proud of the result - yes
  
• This image should show more about myself than I think it does - ??
  
• It should be visually pleasant - yes

The right side of the photograph is entirely black, which symbolizes my past - I have had some hard times before coming to my present school and they have made me who I am today. The light on the left side is my present and future, which are much brighter than the past. My hand is embedded with text because I love reading - when I was little, I was more often told not to read too much because books are expensive, than I was ever asked to read. All of this reading is part of me, so I felt like it should be embedded in my skin. The other thing I added to this image is a block of ASCII codes. Over the past years, I've developed a strong interest in computers and technology, because I like the mysteries behind them. Putting this interest in the black part of the image was just as natural as embedding the text in my skin.

Portraiture Technology

Our first unit for the year is going to be a shared class between art and technology. We are going to make self portraits of us using digital pictures that we have edited, and then paint them using various materials that represent us.

This is a project all 10th graders do in their time and I was really impressed by the ones of the past years. This unit is one of self discovery, where I can learn more about myself, my personality and what I can achieve. Besides teaching us photo editing and painting skills, this project allows each one of us to know a little bit more about what makes us an individual. No two self portraits can be the same, because no two individuals are the same.

I remember something that happened to me when I was little - there was an interactive exhibition at a museum on how we are all different, and one of the activities was to enter information about yourself such as hair color, eye color, shade of skin, wheter or not you can roll your tongue...the computer would then compare your results to that of the last 100 people and tell you how many people also had brown hair, blue eyes, etc. until it proved you that out of the last 100, you were unique. I really liked this experiment and just for fun, I entered the exact same information about myself twice in a row. The computer still told me that I was unique. I was a little bit depressed and remained skeptical about my "uniqueness" for a while.

This episode is one that helped me realize the importance of self discovery. Even if there had been another girl who had the exact same hair color, the exact same eyes and who could also roll her tongue, she wouldn't have been me. She wouldn't have lived through the same things and she wouldn't be the person I am - it is just not possible for two people to be exactly the same. Learning about yourself is an important thing because it allows you to learn about your own strengths and flaws. When you learn more about who you are, you can improve yourself and explore new ways of thinking. Knowing who you are is also great for your self confidence.

Society in general can benefit from your own knowledge of yourself. If we never took the time to learn a little more about what we can accomplish and what we want to do, we would all be copies of each other. If people such as Thomas Edison hadn't known they were determined and they could do anything they set their mind to, we would still be living without light bulbs! Overall, this project allows us to know more about our identity, and that is knowledge that will last our entire life.

Relating to the areas of interaction, this project is in my opinion most relevant to Human Ingenuity and Health and Social Education. Social Education isn’t only about communicating with others, but also about how you think and act. It’s difficult understanding others if you don’t know who you are yourself. This project helps us learn more about the image we have of ourselves, and communicate that image that others. This project is also linked to Human Ingenuity because of the way we create our portrait and express ourselves through mixed media. Acrylic paint shows less about yourself than carefully chosen materials that all have some meaning for you. Finally, this project is linked to Human Ingenuity because you don’t see very many monkeys going on journeys of self discovery. The idea we are unique is inherent to mankind and is one of the reasons we have gone so far.

The guiding questions while researching my project will be those:
· What are some of the different ways I could present my portrait?
· What materials would be suitable for my self portrait?
· How can I best show my personality and interests in one image?
· How can I make sure this project really represents me?
· In which ways can I use technology to make art?

Hello!

This year, we will be keeping our technology journals online, which is exactly what this blog is about. Everything I put here is public but I doubt you landed here through web surfing - you're probably one of my classmates or my teacher. Well, in case you are a random internaut, I still can't tell you much about myself. My first name is Sarah and I'm in Grade 10 in an IB school.
On this blog, I will be putting all of my technology work - for each project, I'll have research, designs, plans and the actual product.
Enjoy the blog!