Unconventional Self Portrait

For this project we were faced with the task of creating a portrait, but not any  portrait... A portrait made out of unconventional materials. It was fun to get out of the "norm" of painting and creating with conventional items, and do something unique! I decided to do a picture of myself because who wouldn't want to make themselves out of other things?? I came up with a lot of ideas for what I could make myself out of such as different kinds of chocolate chips, crayon wrappers, and more. I began to think of what we as people are physically made up of, and that is everything that our journey has given us so far. We are made up of our memories and the people that are along for the ride with us on those memories. So, I decided to make my portrait out of none other than black and white photographs that I had! It was really fun because I got to go through lots of old photos of me as a child, my family, and my relatives from a long, long time ago!! 

I copied all of the photos and made them black and white. After they were copied, I cut them up into lots of pieces that I thought would create really good value. It was kind of messy ;) 

I have to admit that looking at all of these tiny "scraps" before i began was kind of intimidating. But that just wanted to make me go for it more!! Before I got started, I went outside when the sun was starting to go down and took a photo of myself. I then loaded it onto the computer and messed with it to get the values that I wanted. 

I began the final piece by painting my canvas and then sketching the silhouette of the body onto it. I filled in all the values by using different sized, shaped, and colored photographs- the lightest pictures portraying the lightest values and the darkest photos portraying the darkest values. It was difficult to get the right placement of everything and figuring out the right values, but I achieved exactly what I had envisioned!! It was really a unique experience to be able to apply everything I have learned thus far about value and composition and apply it to something totally different than anything I have ever done before. I really like the message that I was able to portray with this collage. I think it is so cool how art can tell such an amazing story deeper than how it looks!