Final Major Project - chateau pictures

For several weeks in the summer before this final year of university I worked at a chateau in a small rural village in France.

The chateau itself is beautiful, albeit still with some areas right at the top to restore, but it has several guest rooms in the style of the era it was built as well as a large restaurant room, bar, breakfast room and hallways with chandeliers suspended from the ceiling.

Below are two photographs I took to show the shape of the chateau and the beautiful shape of the main stairway.

 

After working here I have several ideas; I would like to work in ceramics to create pieces either in the style of objects seen and found in the chateau or reflecting French culture in some way.

Butterfly portrait

For this portrait, I decided to draw a woman (as with most of the fashion photography models), surrounded by butterflies.  I am using coloured pencil for this, and then I plan on outlining the butterflies with felt tip or fineliner pen.  Below are progress shots.

 I decided to add quite a lot of hair in the picture to give an appearance similar to that of the models used by Tim Walker, as well as similar to how fairies and other fantasy creatures are depicted.

The butterflies I have chosen to draw in different colours to stand out, as well as giving them harsh black outlines and some white detailing on the wings.

Below is my final result.

Tim Walker - flowers/nature adornments

Thinking about facial and beauty adornments led me to consider the option of natural accessories, such as flowers, insects and even animals.

I discovered some work of the fashion photographer Tim Walker on reading a fashion blog, after realising I had seen much of his work before.  Walker is renowned for using bizarre, ethereal and fantasy landscapes in his work, including many models of (and some real) flowers and insects.  Below are a few of his works which particularly stood out to me.

I also discovered this fashion photo of a model by Ben Toms, using butterflies and butterfly wings as a mask similar to a masquerade one.

I would quite like to create a portrait with butterflies, possibly in coloured pencil as that is a medium I have not used before in this project.

Masquerade mask edits

Using a beautiful portrait of a woman wearing a masquerade mask I found on Pinterest, I have created some edits to showcase the contrast between the eyes and the intricacy of the mask.

These first two edits I chose to use a dark blue and light blue.  The first edit is in a block dark blue colour, which nicely accentuates the detail on the mask as well as fading out the detail of the hair and clothes.  
For the second edit I mixed the watercolour and coloured pencil effects together in order to create more pastel tones for the portrait, which in turn added lighter blue hues to the eyes, mask and clothes.

The last two edits I've created in black and white.  The first one is a mixture of an imprint and charcoal effects, which created an interesting and slightly blurred background effect, whereas the second one is a pencil drawing effect in which I raised the pencil thickness in certain areas and lowered it in others.I think these edits beautifully enhance the detail of the masquerade mask, as well as emphasizing the detail of the eyes and portrait in general, as well as the direction of the subject's gaze.

Further kaleidoscope digital drawings

I have briefly returned to creating some mandala-like kaleidoscope digital drawings on my computer, using as many different brush styles and colours as possible.  Most are simply thick with patterns and colour, but some others I have tried to show thicker, more defined lines in a more painterly style.

I will print these out, alongside the ones I have created previously, to see how their colours and patterns show up on paper and to give a nice contrast to my portraits as well as complement my mandala drawing.

Facial adornment - Indian

Indian culture is famous for its women wearing a plethora of jewellery.  This jewellery is often in abundance at weddings; Indian brides often sport headpieces, nose rings attached to earrings and necklaces featuring many brightly-coloured jewels.  Below is an example of this - the bride also wears rings attached to each bracelet with chains of jewels.

This photo shows opulence and extravagance; as well as the many jewels on the jewellery, the bride is wearing very strong makeup which consists of thick eyeshadow, fake eyelashes with stick-on jewels and eyeliner.

This photo is one of many that are usually taken at weddings of brides by themselves, in order to show off their face and jewellery to their full potential and glamour.

The bride and groom often have a photoshoot before the wedding, as well as their family participating in these to add even more photos to the family album!

Afghan Girl - drawing progress.

I decided to draw an A3-sized portrait of "Afghan Girl", the famous portrait photograph taken by Steve McCurry.  I do believe this subtly links in with the theme of masking; the girl's hair is partly concealed with a headscarf, as is below her head, yet her face is fully exposed.
The main attraction of the photo is, arguably, the girl's eyes - their bright greeny-blue colour contrast with her tanned skin.  I would like to show this contrast in my drawing.

Below are a couple of progress pictures, as well as the current progress.

 

I started by shading in the skin tone with my fingers and a cotton bud, before adding rough areas of dark colouring to the hair and headscarf.  Once I'd added sufficient shading, I started to blend areas together and add bolder lines for the detail followed by more detail.

Here is the current progress of the drawing.  I'd say it is close to finished - however, I would like to add more detail to the face, possibly some darker tones, as well as continue blending the head and neck scarf.  I would also like to add some bolder green colouring to the eyes, after referencing the original photo.  I am very happy with the progress of this drawing so far.

Artist (photographer) research: Steve McCurry

Through my research into masks and facial adornments, I came across a selection of photographs of people from various cultures with differing facial adornments or painting, taken by the photographer Steve McCurry.  I am glad I have re-discovered McCurry; I saw and admired his work a few years ago and since then had not seen any photographs of his.

Below are a couple of examples of his work, alongside the link to my Pinterest board that features more of his photos:

http://www.pinterest.com/hanamintz/facial-maskingadornment/

McCurry is possibly most famous for his 1984 photograph "Afghan Girl", a portrait of a young refugee in Afghanistan, which was used as the cover of a National Geographic magazine.  Below (left) is the famous portrait, with the same woman (right) 17 years later; McCurry spent much time attempting to find the girl, showing various locals his original photograph, before again finding the woman and taking an updated portrait.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2002/04/afghan-girl/index-text Here, National Geographic tells the story of the girl - her name (Sharbat Gula) only being discovered 17 years later.

I plan to draw the original portrait, perhaps drawing the eyes in colour in order to appear more striking, and to emphasise that although her head and neck are 'masked' with a headscarf, her eyes shine through with their colour and power.

Steve McCurry is probably my favourite portrait photographer; he manages to capture the personality of the subjects as well as showing depth and soul in their eyes, alongside vivid colours and atmosphere.

Masks & facial adornment - research

My research into masks began with an obvious physical mask - masquerade masks.  Masquerade balls, in which dancers wore masks concealing part or all of their faces, can be traced back to the 15th century when Carnival season was popular.  France and Italy both held plentiful masquerade balls - in fact, Venice still has a carnival every year today, in which participants adorn masks and clothes suitable for a ball.

Please see my Pinterest board here for some photographic inspiration:

http://www.pinterest.com/hanamintz/facial-maskingadornment/

Following the above research, I started to look into the makeup and style of the Japanese Geisha (芸者), also known as geiko (芸子) or geigi (芸妓).  My own name is a Japanese word for 'flower', thus inspiring me to further delve into Japanese culture.
Geishas act as hostesses to gentlemen and are trained in various arts to entertain, such as classical music and dance.

Their makeup famously consists of a painted white face, with strong red lipstick and black eyeliner around the eyes.  Unwhitened areas can be found on the back of the neck in a V or W shape, giving the illusion of the white base as a mask.  The bottom lip is rounded with the red lipstick in order to create the shape of a flower bud.
After working as a Geisha for three years, the women wear a more subdued style of makeup.

Please see the above link for more photographic inspiration of Geishas.

I have started a watercolour portrait of a Geisha, and may also create a portrait inspired by masquerade masks.

New idea - "masks"

I created two new face paint looks on two subjects - the first inspired by comic book art style, with bold colours and black lines to emphasise features, and the second simply a burst of colour and patterns.  Below are photographs of the process as well as the final results.

 

 

After creating these face paint pieces, I decided I wanted to further explore masks or facial masking as a much broader yet detailed idea for my project.  I shall research 'masks' or forms of masking in different cultures and within different countries, as well as creating pieces from these - mainly drawn portraits, but I will attempt to incorporate colour and possibly paint too.

I shall post regular updates of portraits I have started as well as research into masks of other cultures.

I have started a portrait in pencils inspired by El Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), in which I hope to achieve lots of detail and light and dark areas for the face.  The hair surrounding the face I plan on making quite dark and bold, in order to focus attention on the face and eyes.

I will post another photo of this drawing once I have finished (or nearly finished!) it.

Pencils used: HB, 4B, 5B, 8B.

- Mono & two-colour prints - 

I used print-outs of the edited Dia de los Muertos-inspired makeup photographs I took in order to create some monoprints, both using one and two colours of ink.

To create monoprints, I rolled a small amount of intaglio ink onto a glass surface using a roller.  I then spread this out until sticky, before gently laying a piece of newsprint paper on top with one of the photographs attached to the top.  I then used the end of a paintbrush to draw over the lines and some of the details in the images, in order to create a imprint of this photo in ink.  I then carefully peeled the paper away from the ink and a print was created.

For two colours, I repeated this method but laid the paper onto a different colour of ink that had been rolled out.  I chose to only draw in some of the features from the photo this time.

I think that some of the prints worked beautifully, whereas others not so well; however, I will work into these prints using ink or pen to add more detail.

 

 

- Day of the Dead: edited photos for printing -

I used an editing programme in order to edit some of the photos I took of the Day of the Dead makeup I created.  I used an effect to make the photos look like prints; I will then use these photos to create monoprints, using one or two colours.

Below are the edited photos.

I like this effect on the photo editor due to the fact that I could change the colour of the entire image.  I think this effect works well to highlight the detailing of the makeup, as well as the shape of the models' faces.

I will use some or all of these images to create some monoprints, as well as creating some more makeup/face paint designs.