Portraiture Challenge: La Luna

1. Portraiture Challenge: La Luna Process Portfolio Tina Nguyen

2. Portraiture Challenge The first days of the portraiture challenge, I developed my skills through sketching portraits of myself and other people. I timed myself throughout the process; once the timer goes off, I placed my pencil down and fixed minor errors with an eraser. The first portrait started at 10 minutes and it gradually increases by 5 minutes per portrait. As the time increases, I was able to add more details into my portraits. The portraits are as followed: • 10 Minutes Portrait • 15 Minutes Portrait • 20 Minutes Portrait • 25 Minutes Portrait • 30 Minutes Portrait

3. The first portrait had a limit of 10 minutes. Therefore, I chose an easy photo of my sister to create the 10 minutes portrait. As one can see, the skills shown are mostly basic outlines and no shading which makes the portrait extremely flat. The directions of the lips and nose does not match the eyes; thus, the portrait is unproportional.

4. With an extra of 5 minutes, I finished a self-portrait sketch. In these 15 minutes, I focused on balancing the proportions of the face. Although it took multiple trails with the nose and mouth, I have sketched a proportional self-portrait. However, I did not have enough time to shade which gives the sketch a flat view.

5. In my 20 minutes portrait, I have decided to sketch the portrait from a different view of the person. The back view does not require a lot of attention to the face. It focuses more on the position of the person's body and her hair. Also, I focused on the details of her dress; the little dots and the slight shading. I believed if I have done a good job on recreating the hair and polka-dotted dress. The body is not accurate according to the smaller arms and lack of shading.

6. For my 25 minutes portrait, I incorporated shading techniques to give dimensions to the portrait. The position of the nose, lips,and chin shows how I have developed my skills in sketching more proportionally. The problem I have faced throughout these portraits, is time. Within 25 minutes, although I could incorporate more techniques in my portrait, I was unable to finish the whole portrait.

7. The 30 minutes portrait is a lot more complex comparing to the previous portraits because of its facial position. I have never sketched a portrait in this position before so there were slight problems one will be able to see. However, this is the best portrait out of this challenge. I was able to capture the light and dark contrast on the face. Personally, I am satisfied with the result of this portrait. The face is proportional and dimensional.

8. 3D Origami Mask When doing this portraiture challenge, I took an interest into doing research about 3D Origami Mask. Origami is a very beautiful and delicate form of art. I had an idea of successfully incorporating the portraiture challenge into a mixed media work. I came across an article on Yatzer called Beautiful Origami Portraits Open a Window onto an Imaginary World. The photographer Giacomo Favilla and origamist Francesca Lombardi collaborated in a project called One of Us. The objective of the black and white portraits wearing beautiful origami masks is to blend human and animal nature together as one. I researched on how to create animal origami masks but I was disappointed with the result. Therefore, I choose to freely create my own mask. I started off with folding the papers in many directions to create folds. When I folded it, I believed it will easily create lines for me to shape it into a mask with dimensions. Although it was a 3D mask in the end. The folds make the mask looks like a mess and not so crisp. Certain parts of the mask was very wrinkled which lowers my satisfaction on the result.

9. After I understood what I can do with my wrinkled folds, I created hollows in the eyes and placed tea leaves to represent the eyes. The final result of the 3D mask looks amazing. It has the structure of a humans face with deformities to create a fantastical view to the human facial structure. I almost represent the masks one will see at African Historical Museums. 3D Origami Mask While I was folding the mask, I planned to use tea leaves to create darker color contrast to the mask. However, the color of the tea was not dark enough. I decided to use tea leaves instead to create the darker contrast.

10. Photography of Light Reflections Along with 3D masks and sketches, I explore photography and light reflections. I wanted to explore how lighting affect from different angles. I have learned a trick to create rainbow streaks using a DVD. When light reflects onto a dvd at a certain angle, it forms rainbow streaks. The rainbow gives it a magnificent effect; in reality, you can see more vibrancy in the color. Unfortunately, the phone camera did not capture the its vibrancy. While experimenting with the DVD, I explored how the opposite angle of lighting will create a bright light reflection on to the face (as shown in the pictures on the bottom). The reflection represent studio lighting with a little difference is the hole of the DVD creates a circular shadow in the middle of the reflection. The common problem among photos taken by phones are the quality of the photo, it always need a lot of editing. The vibrancy and quality of the original pictures was extremely poor.

11. Photography of Light Reflections I edited mostly the contrast and saturation of the photos. I lowered the brightness to bring out the colors of the rainbow. When I edited the photo, one can see how the rainbow reflects on the face. One side it reflects a green color that stretches along the chin and on to her neck. Similarly in the photo on the right, I lowered the brightness, increased the contrast and saturation. The reflection focuses on her eyes and the rest of her face. It shadowed her nose and mouth, as if its hiding these features. In the future, I will use a DSLR camera. It will give me better quality and possibly explore more of the rainbow effect and light reflection than a phone.

12. Love Yourself Since I was 15, I had always advocate body positivity and self-confidence. However, in recent years, I lost my self-confidence and hated my body. My weight abnormally increases and decreases because I tried starving myself. These couple of months, I have improved mentally and gained my self-confidence because of Ashley Graham. Ashley Graham is a plus size model who is also an advocator of body positivity. Every each of her social media posts make the audience feel empowered and confident about the body they were given. One of her recent posts deeply affected me. She posted a photo of her beautiful body fat and stretch marks. Her inspiration help me produced a series of body portraits It can be inappropriate for school because it provokes nudity. In order, to validate it for school projects, I edited the photos. The most difficult problem about this portrait is the angle of the camera that will be able to capture my body imperfections without exposing my boobs.

13. Love Yourself I edited the photos into Black and White and reduced the brightness, increased the shadows and contrast. The black and white photos create a mystical effect. It partially hides the nudity and emphasizes on the body fat. It focuses on the imperfections of my skin and stretch marks. It also covered the carpet which I disliked the most. I am satisfied with the result of these photographs. However, there is always room for improvement. I believed investing in better equipments like a tripod and better photo editing software will create better quality pictures and provide more angle options for editing.

14. Inspiration of La Luna Inspired by the body portrait of Love Yourself, I have created an A3 portrait of my body. The idea of La Luna comes from a drawing made by Margaret Morales. I have followed Morales for a short amount of time and I fell in love with her use of water colors and fictional woman figures. The idea of a moon is elegance and mystical. Her artworks are calming and has movements. She mostly hide her figures with a background filled with flowers. Therefore, I combined the realistic drawings of my body with a fictional setting.

15. La Luna I feel a deep connection for this piece because it portrays the beauty of a woman’s body. She shines as bright as the moon. I want to continue using this piece for further artworks. I am planning to complete it in a bigger scale on watercolor papers. I have tested out how watercolor react on this paper and it was not the best result. There are little mistakes that needs to be improved. The hands are small comparing to the rest of the body. The face is a little small and short; it makes the face look crammed up. However, I am satisfied with the development of this piece.