Today I’m going to create part 2 of a narrative of my Studio portfolio.
Recently, Senioritis has been getting to me and I’m really rushing on a lot of my art. In addition, I keep catching colds which also causes me to rush my art. My investigation is based around the question of how the different types of love are expressed through hand motion and action.
Sinclair
My artwork relates to my inquiry because it represents self love. The figure peering into the mirror is shown his reflection but with beautiful colors that provide a sense of majesticism. The dabs in the colored reflection are supposed to represent flower petals, a symbol of beauty and love. In addition, the brighter colors compared to the realistic depiction of the figure is supposed to represent hope and confidence, almost as if encouraging the figure to love himself and see himself in a beautiful way. The hand position, gripping the mirror, is supposed to represent how important self love is. Gripping the mirror is supposed to show urgency and is supposed to highlight the need for realizing how lovely one is. In addition, the paint color being blended yet the paint stroke texture being not as blended is supposed to show that imperfections of flaws can be lovely. This piece also shows evidence of practice, experimentation, and revision because this was my second time using acrylic paint as a whole for an art piece, so I had to practice a bit by painting multiple layers and painting over mistakes. This also shows experimentation because this was the first piece of mine where a human figure appears, so I had to focus more on a new concept of a human figure. In addition, the overall concept of self love is experimentation as I had never done a piece on self love before. This also shows revision because I spent most of my time repainting and repainting.
Pinky promise me 
In this piece, the white background vs. red pen is used to highlight the contrast and make the red seem more passionate, symbolizing and indication for eros. In addition, I wanted there to be layers because I thought it would be a cool idea to demonstrate how love- eros, can be multidimensional and how love is a process, which is also why I chose to use different types of media. I knew that sharpie and pen would contrast because sharpie is a lot bolder, so I wanted to use that for the pinky promise with thumbs touching to show how eros can be demonstrated through trust and promise. I chose to use pen for the other set of hands in the first layer because I wanted the pen detail to show on the set of hands before the pinky promise was made because I wanted it to contrast the simplicity of the permanent marker, in which this contrast symbolizes the many sides of romantic love, eros. This shows evidence of practice because I had to practice hatching for the details of the two hands. It also shows experimentation because I had never had any experience with using mylar to layer sharpie on paper, so it was a fun experience working with new surfaces. It also reflects revision because initially, I had just planned to have a minimalistic outline, but after rethinking the meaning of my work, I wanted the touching thumbs to look complete as the touching of thumbs symbolizes completion of a promise, so I added value.
A Conversation
Conceptually, I made sure to highlight contrast and juxtaposition to demonstrate the idea of withstanding troubles such as time. In this sense, I also created a sense of continuity when it came to composition of the piece because I was able to extend the arms past multiple media. In terms of color scheme, I decided to keep it more basic because I really only wanted the focus of the piece to be on the contrast to show how love can be continuous. I chose the materials to represent these conceptual ideas because I wanted to choose materials that would demonstrate juxtaposition and contrast when it came to value. I wanted this sense of contrast in value because I wanted the materials to stand out against their respective media (for example, white pen against a black background) to symbolize that love can withstand troubles, like time.