Month: December 2020

Inventive Portraiture Process

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Introduction:

In this project, we would be able to compile a reflection of our mental thinking process by incorporating both organic and geometric shapes. Through rapid iterations, use of color, shapes, and placement we are intentionally creating a visual representation of multiple mental states and emotions.

Process

Mind Map 

To give a little structure to my mind map, I began the thought process by trying to answer the question “how do I think through a problem?” It was a little difficult to answer that question, so I put it aside and began creating another map to the question “describe your thought process through an adjective, energy, feeling, emotion.” As I began to visualize words to describe how my thought process works, I numbered and categorized adjectives relating to each stage of my process. I then broke it down even more and took one word from each categorized stage that best describes that step of the process, and organized it into another, more condensed category. 

Iterations 

For the next step in the process, we had to create 50 iterations of simple geometric shapes such as squares, circles, and triangles. I decided to take each of those 5 adjectives from the more condensed list and create iterations relating to similar feelings. I mostly took words from each categorized section relating to the steps of my process and used them as inspiration for different iterations. I focused on the energies and moods of being overwhelmed, focused, optimistic, impulsive, and eased.


When iterating the overwhelmed states, I started each iteration with a simple shape and let my mind direct how more correlating shapes could relate to communicating the feeling. This was a technique I used for all of my 50 iterations. In this state, I had subconscious feelings of shapes being all over the place. A common pattern of my experimentations related with exaggeration of scale.

In the iterations of being focussed, I experimented with different ways of expressing ways of shapes leading into each other, as this personally correlates to steadiness, and leading to a specific matter.

In the optimistic state iterations, I didn’t have any intentions. I again let my mind wander. A common pattern within the iterations is that a few of them often represent newness. For example the two iterations on the top and bottom rows of the most right column show one shape leading into another.

impulsive

eased

 

After completing the 50 iterations, I went back and reviewed all the iterations section by section. I starred all the ones that I favored over the rest. When considering if I liked that specific iteration more than any of the others, I considered how well it expresses my thought process to the corresponding word, and if I can potentially see myself including them in part 2 of the project.

Photo Transformation

I chose to select this photo to begin breaking down for this project. I originally thought this would be a perfect photo to use because I took this selfie when I was in quarantine from having Corona. In this quarantine, I was struggling to get work done and had to constantly reassure myself to focus back on my work. I was sitting at my desk working on school work at the moment and had taken a procrastination break. I felt like this photo somewhat represents one of the lowest motivations, and reflects my thought process the best.

To start the process of breaking my face into more of a geometric form, I simply just traced the photo of myself to get a better concept of what my face looks like flat.

I then rewatched class videos and used the reference photos to break my face into more simple planes. I  decided to keep some facial details such as the eyes because I felt that when the detail was left in,  it help illustrate my mental state right from the beginning.

 

Shape Placement

As I experimented with shape placement, I strongly didn’t like the way any of the shape placements ended up. I felt that all of these iterations didn’t help contour the facial structure, even when I intentionally placed them to do so. I felt that the shapes just seemed as if they were just floating in space, and didn’t correlate with each other like they do in my thought process.



I took inspiration from those iterations to compile a final shape placing. I decided to keep the eye visible again, along with the lips. I also decided to rotate the head to have the chin facing more upwards, to correlate the shape placement of feeling overwhelmed. When doing so I found that the shoulders took away from this energy, and so I removed the outlining. As the angle of the photo, I took of myself was from a lower angle, this outline pulled the energy of the portrait down and created a negative tone.

Color !

Inspiration

When coming to the stage of this project where it was time to incorporate colors I approached the idea in a few different ways. One of the first steps in doing so started with researching images to find tones that accurately represented my thought process.

I drew inspiration from this photo because I felt this represents my mental state when initiating a problem. I felt that the blue tones were really soothing, and reflects how I try to stay calm, even when situations become overwhelming.
This is another image I drew inspiration from. I really liked that these two colors together are very artistic, and give off a creative feel. I associated the feeling of being creative with my optimistic state, as being creative plays a role in being optimistic about a situation.

From gathering this information I began to look at ways I could incorporate all these feelings into a color scheme. I began by looking at the color well and playing around with the closest colors to each mood. When I selected a tetradic color scheme I found that these four colors represented a different aspect of my thought process, and was excited that it would all work to be aesthetically correlating as well.

From inspiration and research, I decided to do a tetradic color scheme using these colors. I did further research, along with personal feelings to assign different parts of the portrait to different mental states.

I found that the orange/red/peach color represented the overwhelming feeling. When I become overwhelmed, I also become frustrated as well. I then played around with different saturation, shades, and tones to create an idea of colors to place within the shape.

I felt that the purple color represented optimism. As I personally associated the color with creativity I felt that it only made sense to assign it to my optimistic state.

The shades of green represented me being or remaining the focus. An interesting fact I found out about myself by playing around with the shades and tones is that I may be a little bit color-blind with the tones of green specifically. I didn’t know this at all until I was in this stage, and so I honestly had to focus super hard to compute my intentions into this section. With the help of technology and feedback from others I used context clues to figure out if I accurately was placing the correct color in the right place or not.

I incorporated the blue into my initial mental state, which is represented by my more recognizable face planes. As I also drew inspiration from a photo, I found that the coolness of the tone helped ease the mood of the portrait by reflecting the part of me staying calm.

I first started by adding in the blue tones, as I was most excited about how well this color ties together the portrait. I decided to use the tones to correlate with the planes of the face. I then began working on the orange overwhelming state by using tones to create a 3D effect.
I then added back in the outlines of my optimistic and focussed states, along with incorporating somewhat of another shape from iterations.
I like two of the shape placements of one of my iterations of where it was located on the top of the head, and where the neck is. From inspiration, I decided to add a few drips off the neck because it helped tie together the calm state to the focussed state, as it draws attention. I then took a different approach and added triangles popping out of the head. I create this shaded texted of flat triangles on the surface of the head, leading to pyramids coming upwards. I felt that this represented being open-minded, as the triangles lead in many different directions. I also began working on the purple optimist state as well. I chose to use the slinky shape from inspiration from a class exercise. When doing the exercise I kept thinking about how it felt when looking at the directions the spirals went in. I thought about how when you play with a slinky it always goes in different directions and correlated it to the way of being optimistic, and how ideas are always bouncing around. In this stage of coloring the shape, I decided to highlight and shadow the shape to appear slinky like.
By adding color to the green focussed state, I wanted to create a gradient from a lighter done to a deeper tone. In doing so I felt that it would create a dimension to lead into a steady-state to correlate with the way the ovals, and turns lead into a steady stream of spheres.
I finished the portrait up by finishing up unfinished ideas and adding an airbrush stream of two of the complementary colors that I favored the most. I intentionally did so to emphasize each aspect of the portrait by drawing attention to the curves.

 

Final thoughts:

I am really pleased with the final result of this composition. From last-minute critiques, I felt like I could maybe incorporate my of the project guidelines into the final deliverables instead of moving further away from them as I did. However, by looking at the finished portrait, I personally feel that my mental states were all delivered by intentions in doing so. In the future, I would like to work on abiding more by the limitations given to help better my creativity of thinking outside of the box.