Inspiration in the Form of a Rusty Red Car
March 03, 2017
Assignment: Create a mixed Media Self-Portrait
Reaction: UGH!
And then the universe stepped in: within a week the concept of self portraits showed up three times - the assignment in Lesley Riley's 52 Pick Up class, a friend's visit to the National Portrait Gallery, and another artist showing a book of self portraits as inspiration.
Message received, and I got busy.
This "self-portrait" is a veritable mish mash of all sorts of bits and pieces.
The greenish blue background is a gelli plate print created earlier this summer. I generally have a stash of them, and they never fail to delight me.
The brownish black and brown background is an Iphone shot of this beauty at Lucketts Market.
I cropped it to this:
I cropped it again, rotated it, and then digitally manipulated it using PhotoLabPro on my Ipad, and ta-da....got this!
Is this not ever so cool? I quite fell in love with it, and came up with several other variations on the theme using the same app.
Now, down to the nitty gritty of it. I needed a photo of me, and I really didn't want to start shooting more selfies, so I grabbed another Iphone image shot in a silly moment last weekend.
I began with this:
then manipulated it with the same app to what you see in the final portrait. I cut myself out and glued it to the brown background.
And then the fun began: white Uniball signo pens, black sharpies, a word sticker, a rub on of the word "Focus" altered with more white pen, a tiny paper butterfly...well, you get the idea!
I threw a black mat over it to look official, and well, just because I could.
Thank you, rusty red card. You can count on showing up in my artwork again and again and again, sometimes altered beyond belief!