Deconstructing My Self portrait

This lesson we took time away from having a direction and focused on the power of play and the process of 'doing' by making cut-ups based on our-self.

The first thing we did was get an A4 sheet black and white photo of our-self to deconstruct and re-create ourselves into an A5 format. My initial process was to cut it up evenly and try to mirror my movements for each piece I cut. e.g. if I moved one piece clockwise I would counterclockwise an alternative piece.

I also used visual intuition on what I feel felt 'right' at the time through colour, composition and style. While this image is clearly not 'normal' there is still the elements of a face which gives good insight on how our brain recognise faces and facial features.

The next task was to interpret our new Frankenstein creation collage into a drawing. I used bold sharpie; my go to drawing tool for quick and messy (mindless) drawings. I tried to focus on shade, shape and overall appearance the outcome was sketchy and odd.

Following on from this task we were given a new method to work with. We had to scan our faces into a scanner to use to create another cut up. I had previously done a project around scanography in college and while I may regret it, here is my post dedicated to scanography here. In attempt to make my scan odd I tried to move along with the scanner intentionally elongating and deforming my face. I intentionally used a red scalf as a method of getting texture into the scan.

After getting my printed A3 scan I got to work into once again deconstructing it. This time I attempted a more glitch inspired, sharp edged kind of look. I put most emphasis on arranging my scalf pattern in an interesting manner, seeing it as a focus point to my overall image, my final outcome can be seen below along with other students outcomes.

 The final task of the workshop was to re-create a self portrait using textures. As someone who is often afraid to use textures, I was both excited and nervous to implement them into my own work I found the task surprisingly easy using the patterns as shades of grey like tones and even playing around with more 3D inspired aspects such as crumpled paper to represent my wavy hair more visually. Below is the image I used for reference and the outcome of my work.

To continue playing around with these textures I decided to replicate one of my more cartoon-ish art styles out of  the patterned paper. I thought it would give my style a cutesy pop-art and visually stimulating style. It was really fun to see my usual cartoony sketch made more textured, something I would have probably avoided if I hadn't done similar work in the workshop.

The reason these tasks are so enjoyable is the lack of thought that needs to go into it, a true free flowing process. Each task was fast paced to disconnect a sense of sentiment to the images and force a 'just do it' attitude. These activities reminded me of dadaism and the fun of random acts and oddness that can happen during a process.