What is a portrait?

Before this week at college, if someone had asked me what a portrait was I would have said, 'a painting or drawing of a persons face', which isn't incorrect but I've learnt that a portrait is so much more than that.

Firstly, the portrait doesn't have to even look like the sitter! It just needs to represent that person in character or physical features, or of course both.

This means a portrait of someone can be done using collage, typography or even symbols. Below are my responses to six atypical portrait studies of my friend Jess along the lines of: a toten pole, shape, internal, senses, symbols and typography.

Alexander McQueen

McQueen was first an interest of mine when I saw some of his work in the V and A in London just before he died in 2010. The collection was of animal like prints that in some parts were mirrored, creating a very aesthetic and symmetrical effect down each garment. The use of colour and pattern that seemed somewhat chaotic just fitted together perfectly. It shows that nature’s natural patterns are beautiful and with a bit of tweaking, can be made slightly more manmade but still have that natural beauty about them. The garment below demonstrates this perfectly. By changing the colour of an animal print and distorting it by adding symmetry, a whole new beautiful pattern is created. The soft billowy skirt area complements the garment well as I think it represents the softness of nature and the environment. The addition of copper coloured flecks around the waistline is another detail but doesn’t take too much attention away from the dress as a whole.

McQueen’s garments sell for thousands of pounds so only the very rich can afford his pieces but collections take place around the world that the general public can visit instead, making his work accessible.

Jim Dine

The contrast between smudged backgrounds and very detailed drawings in Dines work is very appealing to me as the two approaches complement each other perfectly; the smudged backdrop makes the detailed image come forward.

Dine tends to sketch tools and this choice in media of charcoal makes the tools look like they have a messy, dirty feel to them. Using charcoal in this way to perhaps draw something refined wouldn’t have the same feel to it. Although, having said this, Dine does draw flowers in the same ‘messy’ way and he cleverly uses negative space in all his drawing and these are very aesthetic too. I experimented using negative space with some flower drawings based on Dines work which are below.

I particularly like the drawing of a plant by Dine below. The contrast of dark, hard lines and soft smudging is very beautiful. I also like the shading of negative spaces around the plant and the stark white against very dark patches.

 

Dine has also experimented using colour in his work as shown below. I like the subtlety of colour in this piece and the colours seem somewhat darkened by the addition of charcoal which creates a beautiful smudged effect.

Eley Kishimonto

Eley Kishimoto is a fashion and design company founded by Mark Eley and Wakako Kishimoto. The patterns crated are printed onto curtains, clothing and wallpaper to name a few, making this work accessible.

 

The bright 1960’s approach to Eley Kishimoto’s pattern is what jumps out to me. The patterns are somewhat busy in terms of the size of pattern, yet limiting the colour use to 4 colours per pattern works well. To me, they’re the westernised version of African wax prints as they contain colour and vibrancy but include images that are more related to western civilisation such as rabbits and flowers. Some of the patterns are quite graphic with a more linear approach, showing that Eley Kishimoto includes a range of ideas.



I particularly like the print below as rolling hills are shown through layers of red, pink and brown. The streaks of colour add a fluid movement to the pattern that’s gentle and aesthetic. The colours add an interesting alternative to simply green.

Dawn Dupree

By building up layers of print, Dupree creates very beautiful images that are very illustrative and often flat. The use of garish colour is what appeals to me in her work. Black and white is often used as a base, with added brighter colours to lift the images. It could be said that her work is chaotic and perhaps childlike in terms of the colour and images used, yet I see this as a positive as the eye constantly has new things to see that it didn’t perhaps see last time. Also, each image has been skilfully scaled and placed in the overall piece to make Dupree’s work highly skilled. I love the layered effect of applying different colour and shapes on top of one another which can add some translucency to some images.

Dupree’s work has been printed on cushions and tea towels to make it affordable to everyone which I love, such as the cushion below. I love the unusual choice of using a microwave on a cushion and the use of colour and the subtle yellow edging to the microwave which makes it jump out. The background images create a good backdrop for the microwave and they compliment it well. The use of vague prints of other angles of the microwave is very clever as its extra added detail, yet it doesn’t take focus away from the main image. The white boomerang shape just lifts the whole piece and I don’t think it would work as well if the white wasn’t there.

To me, Dupree’s work is very original and unique to her.

Visual Communication

The designing of logos and lettering is a discipline that catches my eye on a daily basis. I love how a few simple shapes and lines can convey a message a lot better than a paragraph of text. I used to take part in calligraphy classes with my Mum so I've looked at lettering and spacing before but usually with traditional type so it was great to try experimenting with modern and well recognised type in college. I think it's very easy to forget that every font and image we see has been maticulously designed so that it represents the product perfectly and this last week has been an eye opener into how designers go about creating these images and fonts.

The art of designing a type that perfectly fits the quote you are saying is what's inspired me the most. It sounds an obvious thing to consider when copying out a piece of text but I've had to think about it a lot more this week than I've done previously and I've loved it. Just changing one letter design can give an entirely different spin on a word which I think is very clever.

I researched the illustration artist Olivier Kugler and I love his basic line drawings and as a result I've started to create my own work on my iPad based on his technique with blocking in colours. It doesn't always matter that each line is completely finished but it creates a beautiful end result that's very unique. 

Visually capturing an audience

The point of a front cover for a journal or magazine is to capture the audiences attention, even if they had no intention of picking up your editorial. This article from Creative Review, March 2012 explains the steps and processes of choosing what colours and images convey the message of your article perfectly. Working from a given title for the article is the best place to start and for the New York Times, their main article title was, 'do you have to be superhuman to loose weight?'. Playing with the idea of superman and hero logos and colour that are easily recognisable instantly draws the audience in as they recognise the image, enticing them to read the article. The overall image produced (shown in the bottom right of the article) is basic with the limited use of colour and detail, creating a very graphic image, yet it clearly represents a large superman. Sometimes having too much detail on an image (top left corner of the article and the cover with the title, 'The Fat Trap') doesn't convey a message quick enough, as described in the article. The cover needs to be instantly captivating and easy to understand, not full of words or unnecessary images.