Now that we're done with our technology unit, I can reflect on my self portrait. I think this unit taught me a lot more about myself than the previous ones, which I guess somewhat makes sense since it's supposed to be about who I am. At the beginning of the portraiture technology class, I was really enthusiastic, but this enthusiasm faded a little bit as we started actually working, messing things up, and reflecting on it all. As I got nearer to the end, though, I started gaining a lot of personal insight from this and enjoying it more.
I'm used to spending a lot of my time working on the investigation, but for this unit it wasn't my main priority. I wanted to show myself rather than someone else's ideas. If you tell someone who has never seen an egg before to draw one, they will probably be much more creative than if you show that same person 20 "creative" ways of painting an egg. Looking at other artists' work using mixed media helped me a lot for this unit, though. I had started thinking that I would only use very traditional medias but decided to be a little crazier after I got some inspiration from mixed media pieces.
I was surprised by how much one simple photograph could tell (see my investigation blog post) and through my investigation, decided a little more clearly on what kind of materials I wanted to use in my artwork. I made a list of different things I was thinking of sticking on. Looking back on that list, I didn't use origami, rice or souvenirs, but I do have textiles and torn out paper in my final piece. This was a very different investigation from the ones I usually do, but I also think it was more personal. As I said in earlier evaluations, sometimes I'm a little too down to earth with my investigations and this was a good exercise in being more creative. It was quite challenging for me. I think that investigating more and finding more different materials would definitely have improved it, but I'm pretty satisfied with my investigation considering I had never really written one like this before.
Design was my favorite part for this unit. I love editing pictures at home and was very happy to be able to do that as part of a school project, for once. I came up with 11 designs using various methods such as Picnik, Photoshop or Photofunia. Even though it was really fun, I think one of the errors I did during my design is that I ended up forgetting what this project was about in the end. I started having a lot of fun just editing pictures, without really thinking of how they represented "me" - it's strange how my own image became just another toy for photo editing after a while. I started looking at my various designs in comparison to my design specifications and realized that some of them didn't really make all that much sense. I was able to eliminate lots of design at this stage.
The other problem I had was that again, I forgot I would have to
draw this at some point - I think I made a lot of very interesting pictures, using gradients, faded black and white, cool backgrounds, etc. but Ms. Sudra had to remind me these would be a little hard to draw. Finally, I settled for a very simple design where I had just changed the colors and blackened out the right side. Although I think it was the most sensible choice, sometimes I wonder if I couldn't have chosen another design that I liked better, leaving out some of the detail if it really was too hard to draw. I feel like my design didn't give me enough ideas on what exactly to put on my portrait. At this stage, I quickly thought about the layout and the fact I would have a lot of freedom with the entirely black side, but now I think I should've put more thought into which materials I would use. I just came up with them as I went along.
Finally, one thing about my design was that from the beginning, I wanted to use that one picture and barely even stopped to think of other options I had. When I was having fun with Photofunia, I used another ninja-looking picture and I think it also looked great. Maybe there were some other images on my computer that represented me better than the one I used, but I wasn't very open minded about that. I was happy with my design overall, but I think it would've helped if I'd spent more time on it, and tried to think "outside the box".
I think I already described my process in my precedent posts and my presentation, but I'm just gonna go over it quickly. I think the biggest mistake I made was that I didn't learn from my failures. I used too much water on my face, and I did it again on the black side because I was nervous of how bold and final the paint looked if I applied a thick layer of it. This actually really shows the risk taker profile we were supposed to think about for this unit. I was scared of taking a risk and that actually played against me. As I said earlier, I also think it would've helped with my process if I'd spent more time thinking about which materials I would use.
I think my presentation went alright. I was very nervous, because all the people who had gone before me had been so good, and I felt like my portrait just wasn't that nice to look at. Once I started talking, though, I calmed down because I remembered all of the symbolism in my work. I think my presentation might have run a little long, because I was so scared of forgetting something important. I'm not very good at keeping things concise and short, so I'm afraid that some members of the audience started getting bored as I described every single step of the process. It's still better than missing out on the exact meaning of my portrait, I think. One way I could've improved my presentation would've been to have more visuals to show people, such as print outs of my computer designs or samples of my various materials to pass around. I could also have made it more interactive by asking the others for what they thought the meaning of each material was, instead of telling them straightaway.
Once I was done with everything, I decided to test my product against my design specifications by using my test. I think I thought a little too much of solid ways of making sure my design specifications were matched. For example, I asked people if they could see the difference between my original picture and my edited picture. Most of them thought that it was pretty obvious. I don't think I actually needed a test for that. My other test was to ask people what they thought when they saw my portrait and compare it to what I wanted to express. I think this was very effective and proved me that this self portrait really did represent me, because many of their answers were similar to mine.
Overall, I encountered some difficulties throughout this project but I think it worked out well in the end. I learned a lot from it and I think that it was a good way of getting familiarized with the design cycle after summer break. I wish I had worked a little more on my investigation, but I guess that's part of risk taking - learning from your mistakes.
