Currently, I am working on building 3-5 portraits this month for my advanced painting course final spring project. This project has been challenging because it requires so much time and effort. I am also involved in various other studio classes, and I have been trying my best to juggle all five during this semester. I will say that I am grateful for this project because it is giving me a chance to work on my portrait making skills, and building my skills of accuracy of anatomy.

I am working on one painting right now and I hoping to be done with this piece by wed. 04/07/21. These next three pieces will all be charcoal because I want to work with black and white photos from the Ebony magazine. I have also recreated these images in my photo 1 class and I will upload the images to this page as well.

Photo 1 recreation:

Progress Report:

My proposal for advance painting is an extension from what I have already completed 

for the TBD exhibition. My portrait series was rooted in the idea of recreating 70’s

Ebony magazine pages. I am really interested in the 70’s/80’s era, and the glamour that

was apparent upon that time period. My mother has archived a collection from magazines

from her era of the 70’s and I had the opportunity to keep these magazines to get a true

sense of the time period of my mother’s era. I am also interested in this theme because

Since the start of Covid-19 I have been going out less with friends and staying in the 

house more. But I miss the process of “going out”. I miss the process of putting on 

makeup, picking out my outfit and doing my hair and just going to events. I have been 

able to feel this void with my advanced painting project and this has made me feel very

passionate for this series. 

This process from the very first three portraits I have made has been a learning 

experience. I am still creating and taking note of what is working, and what is not

working within my paintings. The research includes looking at the magazines my 

mother has archived, and also going to my public library and looking at even more 

magazines to get an even larger sense of the 70s/80s era. I also have listed artist

on my OSU website that include Khinde Wiley, Aminah Robinson and Ellen Gallagher.

I am also furthering my research by combining my photo 1 assignment with my series.

For my photo 1 assignment I am doing a series of photographs that are going to resemble

Ebony covers from the 1970s. I am having my friends dress and have their hair look

a certain way to really capture the essence of the time period I want to acknowledge in

my work. 

My painting style is unique because of the medium I am using. I love pastels

more than “traditional” paint mediums because I am really familiar with pastels. I am going

to apply for the materials grant through Ohio State because I do need to purchase more

Rembrandt pastels. My plan is to create anywhere between 9-12 paintings total. This 

measures out to be about three paintings a month. 

I have so far completed about three paintings in the month of February 2021. The portrait’s medium’s are pastel with collaged media such as household items, makeup and glitter. These paintings are drawings from my mother’s 70’s Ebony magazines. I wanted to recreate these magazine pages because I am starting to become more interested in the 70’s glamour and style. I am actually going to overlap my advanced painting project with my photo 1 class, and even photograph my friend’s as high fashion 70’s  portraits.

The challenges I have experienced while creating these paintings is the collage aspect. Using hot glue as an adhesive for my collage materials has had its faults. Hot glue does not stick well to pastel which has been a learning experience for me. I think I am going to try other kinds of adhesive for my paintings and see how well they compare to hot glue. The most successful part of my paintings is the fact that I am very passionate about creating them. I have a certain joy while making my portraits because it gives me outlet from the restrictions of Covid-19. Covid-19 has made it difficult for people to go out to restaurants and bars to experience nightlife in Columbus. I felt this restriction in my own experience because I was used to going out most weekends with friends trying to relieve stress from the struggles of being a college student. When bars and restaurants closed down due to Covid-19 however, I managed to create that same experience of “going out” with my portraits.

My paintings “glamour” features stem from the idea of myself getting dressed to go out with friends. The act of putting on makeup, doing my hair and even looking in the mirror gave me a certain confidence and satisfaction that was missed while I was under lockdown due to the pandemic.

Advanced Painting series: Final of series

I have finally finished my series for this semester. Originally, I wanted to create at least nine, but with the various other studio classes I was taking there was just not enough time. However, I am pleased with what I was able to create over the past three months. The first two portraits below are in pastel with mixed media and the last one is in pastel. These three are similar to the series I had in the TBD exhibition earlier in the semester. The similarities lie within the elements of decoration and media. I chose to focus on the  70s Ebony magazine aspect once again, because I was still in love with the idea of “glamour.” These portraits are somewhat different from the TBD exhibition series because I chose to use charcoal instead of pastel in one of my portraits as the main source of  medium.

My subject for this last series was Ebony magazine portraits. My studio research question was “how can I create Glamour within a painting”? This semester I have made an effort to look into the history of Ebony magazines specifically, the era of the 1970s. I have chosen this era because my mother has archived the magazines from her childhood and I think that the history was important to document creatively. My research also included looking into the photography of the magazines. I wrote about the photographer, Moneta Sleet, who was a famous photographer of the 70s. His job included documenting acts of Black history and photographing for Ebony magazine.  I decided to write about Sleet for my photography class this semester because his work resonated with not only my photography work but my paintings too. There is a link to read about Sleet and his iconic work below:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1edD38QJirASzalq0gqmrFaqdDeZZ6hgUTjmU88xAbBo/edit?usp=sharing

For the next few months until the end of the semester I will be completing a series of 12 paintings. The foundation of my paintings will all be collage, and my inspirations are Khinde Wiley, Aminah Robinson and Ellen Gallagher. I chose these three artist because my concept for my three month assignment is to create a series of portraits of people from my mother’s Ebony magazine. The photos in the magazine are really striking and the portraits are very full and bold unlike the portraits we see today in magazines. My mother’s magazine is from the 1970’s so this era is very “glam” to me. Lastly, since Covid-19 I have not had the energy or even the time to go out and have fun like I usually would almost every weekend with friends. Even though I like partying, the most enjoyable part for me was the process. The process of getting dressed, picking out my outfit and applying makeup are all things that I took time to complete before going out downtown. I found though, that I am able to have that same feeling while creating these portraits. The images are all collage, and the collage aspect is applying “makeup”, or even creating my own jewelry to be added to the images. My portraits are not very large, but big enough to create a magazine “feel” and I hope to frame all 12 before the end of the semester. Currently, I am in the midst of starting my third portrait today, (02/19/2021).

Inspiration:

Below are the images I am currently working on:

I am  hoping to add collage elements into these two drawings. The one on the right I have already added elements of jewelry and beads. I also added elements of makeup to it too.

Inspirational Quote-

Focus on your abilities, not your disabilities, and always be true to yourself.

Art Space

These are my drawings for studio prompt one. I am working on a 10 piece drawing of the same object. I chose a coil because  my idea for prompt one is repetition in various mediums. I have five coils made so far and I want to complete 10.

prompt 2-

. How do you conceive of paper? How do your experiences (cultural, personal, etc) with paper inform you? How does paper support your work? How does the material you choose interact, reveal, suppress the paper? What meaning/experience does paper provide? How does paper relate to the support you usually use?

For this exercise I decided to work on different types of paper and collage it into one frame. The materials I used were acrylic paint, toilet paper, paper towels, magazine, printer paper, paper bags and bristol.

Paper artist that inspires me-

This is a piece created by Aminah Robinson and she was born and raised in Columbus, OH. I chose her as my paper artist because she does more than just draw on paper, she illustrates a narrative of scenes in majority of her work by taking paper, and adding other elements to it. Most of these elements are found objects and others are items she has retrieved over time.

Response to prompt questions-

How do you conceive of paper?

1. I conceive paper as not only a tool to use to create work, but also a vessel of therapy. Paper making can be a very therapeutic event to watch, and an interesting project to take part of.
2. How do your experiences (cultural, personal, etc) with paper inform you?
3.  My experiences with paper began when I was in preschool, I realized that paper was a tool I could use to draw images that formed in my head. I knew it was an important part of the drawing experience.
4. How does paper support your work?
5. Paper supports my work because it gives me options. Sometimes I used paper as collage, or sometimes it is the foundation for my work especially in my advance drawing classes.
6. How does the material you choose interact, reveal, suppress the paper?
7. The medium I chose to work with when I am in my home studio is pastel. Pastel acts like a chalk, and it tends to need paper that has a grip or a groovy texture, to keep the pastel “locked” into the paper. I also have learned of a different paper called, velour. This kind of paper is very soft and makes my pastel portraits look like velvet. 
8. What meaning/experience does paper provide? To me paper provides the foundation for anyones work. The kind of paper someones uses really effects the end result of their work.
9. How does paper relate to the support you usually use? I usually am more of drawer than a painter. Paper has always been something I took into consideration especially when deciding what medium to use. 

Prompt 3:

Choose one process and focus in on a detail of the process to expand on in 10 response works.

For my process focused piece I am focusing on pastel skin tone demos.  I created 10 swatches of skin tones. These swatches were created out of just pastel and overlay.

1.

1: IMG_6284 IMG_6290

IMG_6290

Response questions:

What processes do you currently use?

Currently, I use the process of finding inspiration online and creating colors based upon reality. I especially enjoy creating portraits, so I try my best to match my colors based on human beings. I also like using pastel as a medium and this requires a lot of overlay to create the perfect “match.”

2. What processes do you want to develop?

I want to develop the skill of creating skin tones without having to always look them up online. I want to be able to know how to create a certain “brown” without having to reference it online every time I create a portrait.