Applying Giovane's mark to a self-portrait

This month, we did a take-home project during which we applied our artist's mark to a self-portrait. This assignment prompted us to create a composition that reflected our personal identities and then recreate that composition using the artist's mark that we reconstructed from an earlier assignment. My artist was Palma il Giovane.

A lot of very new experiences this year have led me to rediscover a more carefree part of myself. I wanted my composition to reflect this new element of my identity because it holds a lot of importance for my emotional vitality. After taking many photos in the side mirror of a moving car, I frankenstein'd together a working composition using the photo editing app Bazaart.

Most of my glows from this experience come from what I learned in the process rather than the final product, because I don't like it very much. My first composition this year did not set me up very well for likeness because the photo doesn't look that much like me because of the way the angle and lighting affect the bone structure of my face --- many classmates commented that they were only able to see the likeness only after looking at the reference photo. But, I think that a natural sense for composition can be gained through more experience, and I'm excited to see what I can do next time.

I also learned how to allot time for an at-home project --- working in longer chunks was better than shorter chunks because I needed to work while I was in the flow. Working in shorter chunks made it harder to decide when the project was "finished" and work diligently on hard parts, such as the details of the face (which turned out to be a very long struggle).

I learned that I personally should have planned more for this project. In fact, this is so important that I ended up doing it on the fly! I sketched a lot of lips and other body parts on the back of my drawing in order to practice for the actual project. I think the likeness, composition, AND the mark would have all been improved if I had practiced this piece in my sketchbook first with an adequate level of detail. Overall, this was a tremendous learning experience! I'm very excited to see what I can do next.