Every year the Gage Academy of Art in Seattle hosts an annual self-portrait competition. This year I decided to base my entry on a painting I have always admired: Norman Rockwell's 'Triple Self-Portrait'.
But rather than do a portrait of myself in the same pose, I thought it was time to make this more modern. Enter the 'Triple SELFIE-Portrait', in which the artist attempts to take a terrible selfie digital image:
'Triple SELFIE-Portrait', Acrylic on Canvas, 18" x 36"
I had fun with this painting.
For starters, to accentuate the idea of triple, I decided to restrict myself to only 3 colors: Black, White, and Quinacridone Burnt Orange. (Orange because (a) I like Orange; and (b) the sweatshirt I am wearing is the actual color seen above). (Also using the Orange as an underpainting ties all parts of the image together).
Then instead of using a canvas for the third portrait, I decided to use a Windows desktop (In many ways this is autobiographical because I used to work on Windows) with a JPG shown in the photo viewer, except this would be a terrible Selfie, the kind you get when the flash overwhelms the photo.
In the original painting, Norman Rockwell paid tribute to his inspirations by showing portraits of Rembrandt and Picasso tacked to his canvas-canvas. My variation is to paint in a tiny sketch of the Tripe-Portrait painting itself, but also as a JPG image, similar to how we actually use references these days.
Finally the little gnome-ish fella in the lower right corner is representative of some of my current fun work hanging in various venues around town.
For starters, to accentuate the idea of triple, I decided to restrict myself to only 3 colors: Black, White, and Quinacridone Burnt Orange. (Orange because (a) I like Orange; and (b) the sweatshirt I am wearing is the actual color seen above). (Also using the Orange as an underpainting ties all parts of the image together).
Then instead of using a canvas for the third portrait, I decided to use a Windows desktop (In many ways this is autobiographical because I used to work on Windows) with a JPG shown in the photo viewer, except this would be a terrible Selfie, the kind you get when the flash overwhelms the photo.
In the original painting, Norman Rockwell paid tribute to his inspirations by showing portraits of Rembrandt and Picasso tacked to his canvas-canvas. My variation is to paint in a tiny sketch of the Tripe-Portrait painting itself, but also as a JPG image, similar to how we actually use references these days.
Finally the little gnome-ish fella in the lower right corner is representative of some of my current fun work hanging in various venues around town.
Detail from 'Triple SELFIE-Portrait' - close to life size
RSS Feed