Art Gallery Visit #3: Self-Portraits Art Making/Material Exploration

For this project I used the Google Art Project site and explored the Korean Art Museum Association section. Here are the images I selected: 

Untitled by Jung Wook Kim,
Painting (Korean ink and color on Korean paper)
1115 x 7620 cm
2008

Untitled by Jung Wook Kim
Painting (Korean ink and color on Korean paper)
630 x 940 cm
1999

Untitled by Jung Wook Kim
Painting (Korean ink and color on Korean paper)
430 x 340 cm
2004

Now for this project we also had to look at a photograph of ourselves and draw ourselves. This is what I came up with:

Questions about the project:

1. Why did you select the inspiration pieces?

I really liked these self portraits that I’ve chosen because they were different, odd even. They had exaggerated features and obviously it wasn’t a dead on work that looked exactly like the artist. I really liked them because I have very low artistic ability when it comes to physical art. I feel like using examples that are more exaggerated and different to draw my own portrait would help me feel better about how mine comes out – not looking like a photograph but like a different kind of depiction of myself. 

2. Why did you select the media to create your self-portrait?

I’m not an artist as I’ve mentioned, and I’m very comfortable with pencils – that is all I use to write with. So I felt that would be the best choice of medium.

3. What challenges did you face in creating your self-portrait and how did you overcome them?

My biggest challenge was really just getting the piece started. Drawing intimidates me as I have very little skill with it, and merely staring at a blank sheet of paper had me worried. But once I just started sketching and reminding myself I’m not creating a picture perfect image of me it got easier.

4. How does this piece represent you?

I think this image I’ve created represents me in that it’s low key, simple even, but you can almost sense the attitude within it. I also purposely did not include my eyes in the image because as a very shy person, I have a hard time making eye contact or keeping my eyes on people, and felt the odd image could be added to without such a major part of someone’s face

5. What elements and principles of art did you apply in this work?

This is a difficult question, but I feel I utilized the element of shapes in my work, as well as the principle of balance.

6. Did you enjoy working on this project?

I did find this project rather enjoyable. It was fun but also interesting to see what I could create when looking at myself.

7. What do you think of your final artwork?

I think it came out better than I was expecting. I was honestly expecting my work to come out terrible but it really came out interestingly, and I like the thought I put behind it, it was again more than I was expecting to come out of it.