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.