Summer Project

In preparation for the BA Graphic Design course I was asked to complete a summer project of a ‘life- sized’ self portrait. After quite a few months out of creative education I found this task quite daunting and I feared how I would approach such project. The ‘life-sized’ aspect made the task even more challenging for me. I find proportions and life drawing quite difficult, especially when it is required to be full sized.

After deciding to take quite a literal approach, by drawing an outline of my body and drawing over it with fine liner, I could see many flaws in my piece. My portrait was not exactly proportionate to my own body and the approach I had taken was not suiting my initial vision of a very simple outline, rather than detailing. I had tried to draw small pieces which I felt represented me and my personality but after experimenting with some illustrations I quickly realised that they did not fit with my simplistic and single line portrait. Following this realisation, I decided to cut the full outline of my figure out. I was pleased with my decision to do this as it created a more ‘cardboard cut out’ feel to my piece. The only issue was that my self portrait was then very painfully obviously not life sized!

I wanted to make my portrait minimal and just made up of line, however the piece appeared unfinished. I tried to think more in depth about how my self portrait could portray me beyond the surface. I thought about how much I would like to reveal about myself to a group of people I had never met before. I finally decided on experimenting with pastels, focusing in on my hair. My hair has always been something people comment on and is perhaps one of the first aspects of my exterior appearance that people would first notice about me, I decided to only put colour through my hair as this would make it the focus point in my piece, highlighting how it is a focus point in my appearance.

During my crit for my summer project I received a lot of helpful feedback. It seemed as if the colourful aspect of my hair was unclear for some people and did indeed make it look unfinished. Also, some of the crit group felt that the hair was like a separate part of the portrait and was hard to realise why I had decided to only colour the hair.

I could see how the hair could be a confusing part of the self portrait, however in ways I do feel as if I have achieved my goal of creating an overbearing aspect of my exterior image.