Fine Art- Day two: Finding Faces

   Today, I worked in the fine art classroom exploring our faces in so many different ways from using sight and looking at ourselves in a mirror to not looking and only using our sense of touch. This workshop was truly eyeopening completely opposing what we see ourselves as and in my opinion challenging beauty ideals. 

My favourite drawing of them all was the no look only touch drawing, where I placed a piece of masking tape so that I can feel where the centre of the page is to keep referring back to the centre. This process involves closing your eyes and slowly moving your hands around your face and you draw as you touch that area of face and move around the page the same pace as your hand touching your face. Basing the  drawing purely off of what you feel and touch, so that any assumptions of how it should look are completely thrown out of the window. I think that the areas where I used continuous line worked really well as those areas add a lot of depth and shade to the eye and nose area, also I really like how the face looks disjointed almost like a mask adding another narrative to the drawing. The only thing that I think didn't work very well was the masking tape in the centre to show where the centre of the page is and i think that didn't work because I kept drifting away from the centre forgetting that the tape was there. I could do this differently next time by trying to refer back to the central piece of tape to continue remembering which area of the face I was working on and why. My practice could be improved upon by working on a smaller scale and focus on the little details making the piece a lot more focused on the minor details forming the whole picture. To develop my work further I could try using a different material maybe charcoal where it smudges at every touch and it will crumble across the page maybe break from the pressure of moving it around the page, making it not only be created from where I move the charcoal around but where the material itself decides to lay and blend. I think this piece was successful because I really like the fluidity and carelessness of each of the lines and details, the way they combine together to form a image that is just freely created from unpredictable movements making it a very interesting piece.

                                                

The next process we attempted was using soft pastel and coloured pencil and drawing myself from different angles in the mirror. To begin this i laid down a pale nude colour across the page to act as a base  then began drawing myself from looking down, looking up, straight ahead and looking to the side. As I drew each face I rotated the paper to add a new drawing to a new section as well as drawing within different time limits ranging from 1 minute-5 minutes. I think that the best drawing was the 5 minute drawing that is at the top of the photo as I achieved a lot of shading and definition to the face structure and eyes however, I think the 3 minute drawing at the bottom of the picture wasn't as well executed because it seems more rushed and I approached it as a continuous line drawing which didn't exactly work very well. It seems less accurate and less detailed making it a less realistic more abstract idea of approaching a self portrait. If I was to do this again I could use a greater range of colours making them all stand out in themselves and tried to keep the amount of pressure continuous so that each of the colours is applied in the same way, making each of the drawings complimentary to each other. To develop this piece of work further I could draw the faces more spread across the page from different angles allowing them to be more visible across the page. I think that this piece wasn't as successful as I don't like the outcome of this as much, two of the faces are too faint and are overpowered by the two vertical main faces when the vertical faces are quite scruffy and aren't up to my personal standards. 

The next process that I used was completely out of my comfort zone it involved using a damp cloth to apply the acrylic paint directly onto the page and paint a self portrait. I really enjoyed the freeness and less control that came with this form of painting however,  it doesn't have any resemblance to looking like me whatsoever. But I found the process so freeing I wanted to continue and if I was to do this piece again I would practice using the cloth for other paintings such as a landscape or even a seascape. I think that this entire piece didn't go too well because the colours once spread and layered came across a lot darker than what it was meant to and where I tried to add the lighter areas to the face it came across blotchy and didn't blend very well. If I was to do this again I would try using the cloth with much lighter tones and colour palette so that it seems a lot lighter and not dark with the muddy texture/look. I don't think that the outcome of this was very successful as it's blotchy and dark making it look less skin like and more fleshy undertones, yet I still really enjoyed the entirety of the process during this creation.

The final process I trialed was using soft pastel and focusing on a facial feature in particular for this process I decided to focus on the nose and mouth using red, peach and pink soft pastels with a hint of white. What worked well within this piece was the shading from the red to contour the nose and surrounding areas of the mouth but, what didn't work as well was the areas that look blue on the nose and mouth where I added a pale green to add a different coloured pigment of highlight that I ended up really not liking. If I was to do this again I would change the colours I chose and made it a less difference between the colours as opposed to the obvious difference between the colours I chose, I would also stick to white for the highlight. I could improve upon my practice by focusing on complementary colours such as red and green or blue and orange so that the other colour I use for highlight compliments the other rather than adding a harsh streak across the piece. The only problems I encountered when creating this piece of work was the residue from the falling dust off of the pastels and trying to blend out the harshness of the red into such a vibrant, neon pink. I personally don't think that this was very successful because the colours are all completely off and the blending is so heavy from read to pink with what looks like unintentional marks with a dark blue/green colour from where the light green soft pastel was added for highlight. Just emphasising how unpleased I am with this piece and hope to develop this piece further using it as a base to develop a new design on top of possibly using coloured pencil to add more controlled lines.