This piece was made as my midterm project for Drawing 2 at Washington University in St. Louis. The assignment was pretty open-ended, save for the the fact that it needed to be a self portrait and involve hands in some way. After some deliberation, I chose to depict myself expressively talking and gesturing with my hands, a well known habit of mine. Its impossible for me not to gesticulate when telling a story or giving my opinion. The facial expressions I chose to use are pretty well known by everyone ranging from teachers to friends and family. I felt this combination of facial expression and gesture really represented me.
I had been working in my sketchbook with layering, collage and tracing paper with sharpie and I was really enjoying the results. The medium for this piece resulted from an upswing of that exploration.
Talking With My Hands. Sharpie on clear overlay, Nupastel on Reeves paper. 2015.
As shown in the Dean's Program First Year Student's Exhibit
This is the first of three reference photos. I set my camera on a 10 second timer and had a conversation with myself in order to get photos of hand motions.
The second of three reference photos.
The third of three reference photos.
I wanted graphic line-work so I used my Wacom tablet to roughly outline the reference photos of myself. There's a cartoonish essence to the image with the linear overlay.
This is the final line drawing composition, with the three gestures overlapping as if a conversation was in motion. I took this composition and printed it large scale on a plotter printer and traced the lines onto a clear overlay in black Sharpie.
To figure out how I'd handle color, I used Photoshop to test out different transparencies and gradients.
Another color test. I tried to see what the linework would look like on a gray background, with the seafoam green color scale.
The second phase of the final project. The Sharpie overlay over some chalk pastel progress on white paper. The chalk pastel work is done by looking at the reference photos and roughly copying the tones in black white and 3 blue pastels.
The third phase of the final project. More progress.
Phase 4 of progress.
The chalk pastel under layer without the clear overlay.
The final piece.
The final piece close up.
A zoomed in view of the overlay and chalk pastel layers interacting.
