Portrait Paintings

We just finished portrait paintings in my basic painting class. What my professor did for this assignment was take photos of each of the people in my class and print them out. Then each of us (the students) drew from the pile of pictures she took and had to paint that person. We could take on whatever kind of concept we wanted with the portraits and didn't have to paint each other realistically. The girl that I picked had really cool hair that reminded me of a halo. That and the fact that her head was slightly tilted to one side and faced the camera head on inspired me to paint her like a Madonna or an early Christian icon painting. While painting, I also drew a lot of influence from the art nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha because his works contain a lot of haloed or framed women.

Here's my painting.


This was painted with oil on a wood panel that I built myself. I love how the wood panel is so appropriate for my concept: all of those early Christian icon paintings were usually painted on wood for alterpieces. Also, the student that I painted is an art history major so there is that reference to her in the painting.

Madonna and Child painting.


This and the early Christian icon painting bellow both have a lot of gold in the background. This was done so that the figures are pushed forward as well as making them look like they are floating on golden light when sunlight hits the background.

Early Christian icon painting.


Here's a good example of and Alphonse Mucha print.

Digital Printmaking

We are making our way through Digital Printmaking, the second section of my Printmaking course this fall semester. We've made digital prints using photoshop and scanned images. I've also gotten a chance to do some fun photoshop tutorials. This picture I did below was a "city ink" style tutorial that makes any picture look urban and 'popping fresh'! I thought it would be hilarious to do it with one of my French Rococo Pirate costume pictures. Here's what I would look like as a pirate in some cool city!



Right now we're working on books. Everyone is making a 20 page book in photoshop that we will send to lulu.com to get published. I'm so excited about this project. Even when I was in etching, I had heard a rumor that in digital we made books and knew immediately what I was going to do. I started taking photos and drawing/painting images early on! The idea or concept behind my book is based on a phenomenon I encountered last year: I noticed all of these picturesque scenes in Richmond that if you boxed out the rest of the city surrounding it, the building or whatever it is doesn't even look like it's in Richmond. Sometimes buildings look like a tower in Germany or, as I like think of them, holes into Faerie. That's when my concept really takes off. I'm going to emphasized these non-Richmond cites and describe them as holes or portals into the Faerie world with creatures coming out and mortals getting trapped in. The book is a journey of discovery; it starts off with pictures of just Richmond, then progresses to distorted pictures of Richmond that focus primarily on the interesting building or feature, and then the faeries take over. My sister has written up poems to accompany my book, one being the introduction. It's amazing how perfect her poems are for my book when she hasn't actually seen any of the pages or sketches!

Here are some spreads from my book (by spreads I mean the two corresponding pages, so imagine them divided down the middle as they would be in a book). Enjoy!