Double Self-Portrait

So this post requires a bit of pictorial explanation before I post the actual piece.

For those of you who I haven't seen in recent days, while I was out in Minneapolis visiting a friend, I chopped off all of my hair. (Do not despair, I donated it.)

Haircut:

I had a particularly inspired working day the other morning...

and yes, I work better in a silly hat

Gratuitous cat photo.

So pre-haircut, I had started a self-portrait project for a contest. The contest is being run by Tony DiTerlizzi's facebook fan page. The title is "Re-imagine Yourself", and the goal is to create a portrait of yourself within one of the many DiTerlizzi stories. There was no end to the possibilities, and the brainstorming itself was incredibly fun; I almost had too many choices.

In any case, I finally settled on a self-portrait as an imaginary monster in Tony's hilarious and ridiculous alphabet book, "G is for One Gzonk", using my crazy ginormous hair as a jumping off point. I created a monster not only entirely engulfed by the crazy ocean of red, but also whose hair becomes a character itself, creeping about and nabbing odds and ends and even other creatures from the original book.

But then I cut all of my hair off.

So I went back to the portrait, did a little revision, and voila double self-portrait, pre- and post-new-do.

The Rumprunkus

Double Self-Portrait

in the style of Tony DiTerlizzi's

"G is for One Gzonk: An Alpha-Number-Bet Book"

The rhyme in it's entirety:

The Rare and Red Rumprunkus

Is barely visible, you see.

Covered with a vibrant mane,

Her hair's as wild as can be.

That monstrous RED hides many things -

It hides baubles, bits, and bangles.

Even ribbons, rocks, and riches

Are caught up among the tangles.

But beware the creeping tendrils,

As they slither through the air.

With a strange life of their own,

They might drag you under there.

Gouache!

Hello dear readers!

Happy (very belated) New Year!

Apologies for the lack of posts. I spent much of my break from school doing a ton of writing and running around the city with visiting friends (and in doing so found much inspiration for my book project... more about that in future posts). And now I'm two weeks into the semester and already neck deep in projects and class work.

Most of my courses run for the entire year with a couple exceptions. Alas, alack, we shall not see Viktor around this term (you will instead hear stories about Mirko who runs a sort of professional lecture series class), Marshall and Carl have joined forces to create our marathon (10am-4pm) book class, and I'm auditing a class in gouache painting.

All of the work I did for Viktor's project was rendered using ink lines and really thin washes of gouache paint. On the spectrum of water-based paints, gouache falls somewhere between watercolor and acrylic. I've been using it like watercolor paint, but gouache has the ability to create lovely thick matte surfaces. So I figured, why not play with it some more and learn to use it "properly"?

My professor is an older British fellow from London with an accent like the aging rockstar in Love Actually. Needless to say, I adore him already. During our first week, he just wanted us to start playing with the paint and assigned us to do self-portraits. Aaaaaand, go! I had no intention of doing anything serious and produced something entirely silly...

My homage to Norman Rockwell: Triple Self Portrait with Bunny Slippers

Grin.

During our second class, he wanted us to play with the paint and practice color matching. He brought in a whole bunch of small Monet paintings and told us to replicate them. I chose a painting of a winter scene (I believe the title is "The Magpie:) because I wanted to play with using the paint in thick layers. It's a medium that can be built up, so why not build it up?

The Magpie by Me