Finally, here is the final piece in my Elements Project, Project One: Color. After approximately three weeks of work, and many many hours, I have completed this portrait of Mark Zucherberg with the central focus on color. Oh, also, I don’t think I can EVER look at a picture of Mark Zucherberg again.
Before I get started I want to address a question I often receive: why paint him?
The answer is pretty uninspiring; there wasn’t much rhyme or reason. The subject wasn’t really the point of the project.
So, to reflect on what the whole point of the project was, I’m gonna answer a few more questions.
Q: How did you incorporate “color” into this piece?
A: Firstly, I played with the contrast of colors. The initial reference photo I was working with began with a very dark background and eyes but a surprisingly bright face. Because of the time I was able to allot to this project, I spent lots of time mixing and layering colors in a way that was visually distinct and striking-the pink around the ears and green around the hair-but did not lose the integrity of the reference.
Q: What was your method? How has this project affected your style?
A: I work with acrylic paints (although I would love to try oil in the future) so my natural method has centered around layering. In this piece, I played around with layering to form a recognizable figure that also invited a variety of colors. I kept the brushstrokes and form loose to preserve the emphasis on layered colors. As you can see, the hand especially possesses this looseness and detachment that emphasizes how color can arrange an image rather than structure.
Rather than ditching what I am used to, I think that this project allowed me to settle into my natural approach. In my previous pieces, (project-one-color-practice) you can see this loose, layered, color-centric style emerge, but it is in Project 1: Color that I elevate and explore this style with detail and intention. I hope that in the future I will be able to continue to work with this technique I’ve found, and see how I can focus on the other six elements of art.
Q: What constructive criticism do you have?
A: Although I came in with a plan, after I began, I kind of just winged it. Nevertheless, when I look at my mistakes, I would like to think of them as errors of my inexperience rather than lack of adherence to a rigid plan.
However, some things that I wish I was able to be more precise about and retain from my sketched-out-plan would be the facial proportions; I lacked a tiltedness and slimness of the head which ultimately compromised the success of this piece. In the future, I think I’ll have a bit of a better idea about how my style works, so I hopefully can focus on details like proportions instead of discovering my style.
