Project 5 - Process

I struggled with the start of this project. I decided to work on a self portrait. In the past years I've had to redetermine, 'who am I' in various roles in my life. Roles that have influenced this include, but aren't limited to: daughter, sister, artist, aunt, student, employee, victim, graphic designer, survivor, wife, patient, caregiver, ex-wife, girlfriend, and so on. Do the roles define me or who am I beyond these? I will try to answer these with a self portrait. I really debated if I wanted to keep on the eye glasses or not.


Starting with a self portrait image that I removed some unappealing elements that aren't there everyday just recently. Therefore I don't believe these really define me. I corrected the color also and masked the background out. (I also found it useful to listen to music that I haven't listened to in a long time. This kind of gives a feeling of who I was or how I felt at the time I originally listened to them as new songs.)

Accented the edges 4, 9, 4 and turned black and white. To symbolize my pencil drawing background. I retained another version to work with. i might break sections and show 'layers' of personality.

The next filter I added was sprayed strokes stroke length 12 and spray radius 7. It seemed to give the image a bit of inked depth.

I used a butterfly with crosshatching filter and used a color dodge filter on the layer.

I also shattered the face and brought the underlying edited, color face back.

 

(re-adding this apparently it was lost)

In the image I restored the color for the underlying face. I used another face layer at 48% opacity and using Color Dodge on the layer to brighten it. I added a drop shadow for the 'shattered face' to create depth.  I also turned the eyes blue on the outer one. It's symbolic of the color I associate with and also an aspect that almost all my family has but I lack. A sense of being an outsider.

I found a file of flames but I didn't like the intensity of the red on the background. I changed this to blue after applying a  Charcoal filter to give it some texture. I also used a mask to milk back some of the light and texture from the background.

I printed a few test runs and noted the original drop shadow was too subtle - I made it thicker for the final piece.

I feel I captured some of the idea of reinventing yourself over time. It's not necessarily the younger appearing self underneath. It would have been intriguing to use an older person to break down into a younger individual.