self portrait illustrator exercise

the live trace/paint is extremely difficult when the image has many lines. I could not control the areas well.

Illustrator problems

I created a closed image of the border and the bottom of the woman's skirt, but I couldn't devise how to fill that group in as a shape. I would also like to learn how to make a perfect semi-circle.

3 artist comparison

Marina Abramovic’s self portraits are very dramatic with clear focal points and luxurious simplicity. While the simplicity and cleanliness of Cui Xiuwen’s work is all encompassing, Abramovic manages a clean image using lush textures in “warm” contexts. Her work is generally more relatable to the modern woman than Kahlo’s cultural focus and Xiuwen’s overt modernism. Her portraits tell the story of a middle-age women as the heroine of her own life. She obviously carries strong opinions and self-worth, having produced work that touches on politics, morality, and feminine identity. I find her work particularly significant given the modern emphasis on youth when it comes to emotional drama and self-discovery. I believe her work is an intimate look inside a woman who has seen a great deal but recognizes how much she has yet to learn.

Frida Kahlo paints to show pride in her cultural identity. Her look says it all: security, pride, confidence, as well as ethnic identity, acceptance and awareness. Where our modern culture pokes fun at unibrows as unsightly imperfections to be waxed or razed off our faces, Kahlo wears hers proudly as an emblem of her origins and earthly connection. Her style in both photography and painting mirrors this earthy quality and delivers and unexpected relatablility. As some of her works are abstract and quirky, her humanity is immediately evident. Whether or not it is intended, the message sent from the range of moods displayed in her work is that the fear of foreigners often blinds people to the fact that people, particularly women, are essentially the same everywhere you go.

Cui Xiuwen’s work is extremely clean and limited in color and style. She has an extremely unique style, but it is also very narrow. Though many of her works depict herself in early stages of pregnancy, the approach to the images is very detached and cold, providing great contrast to the subject matter. Another trend of her self portrait is the purposely poor photo-editing, where most of the surrealist images do not look like they occupy the same space. If it were not for the coordinating colors and forward-thinking makeup artistry, some works would look better suited in an entry-level Photoshop class. I can, however, appreciate the contemporary simplicity these works provide. Though they are sterile, they still manage to communicate femininity.

Project #1

This project was an outlet for the challenges I'm facing in my life right now. Sometimes things that proclaim to be good often turn out rotten and harmful. The most challenging aspect of this project was getting the hands to look like they were within the same space and scale as the orange. Though the eye tells you that an orange is obviously not within the same scale, I had to manipulate the color of the light being cast on the the hands and the focus of the orange to make them appear within the same universe and space. the orange opening was also difficult because I had a great picture of an orange and a great picture of an open peel, but they weren't the same picture. after fiddling around with the layer masking, I finally achieved a somewhat realistic transposed image.