Art Gallery Visit #3: Self Portrait

For this project I had to go to the virtual gallery due to being out of town for family issues. The gallery I attended virtually was The Museum of the City of New York. I went to its self portrait gallery and found three inspiration pieces that, while not all "self portraits", are all related and helped me decide on what type of photo I would take for my self portrait. 

Self Portrait With Pipe

Vincent Van Gogh

William Henry Harrison

Rembrandt Peale

Self-Portrait in Yellow Vest

Egon Schiele

I chose these three portraits for different reasons. First, I chose the Van Gogh self-portrait because of the serious look on his face which is something I wanted to be in my portrait. In the portrait of Harrison, he was looking off into the distance with still a serious look. That was another aspect I wanted to include: I wanted to look off into the distance. The third self-portrait was chosen because it's unique. It's not a typical self portrait which is also something I wanted to do with my final piece. I want it to be unique

You can see how I took inspiration from the first two photos in my pre-edited picture below:

I chose to digitally create my self-portrait because of my skill with computers as well as my ability to be totally unique with my creation. I wanted to create a unique work of art with my portrait that still had a sense of realism to it, and I feel the final outcome was successful in my goal.

The only real issue I had with creating my final self-portrait was just in the decision process. I knew a basic idea of what I wanted to do, but getting to it was a bit of a fight, however, as you can see, I got to where I wanted to go. In my process of creating the final piece, I removed the background completely and added a fiber effect to it to give it a dark and merky feeling. I wanted to emphasis on my being even more than it already was, so I added the neon glow. However, I still wanted to be kind of hidden. It was a case of wanting to hide but still be seen at the same time. I feel like I achieved that goal with this portrait. My face blends in with the background, but you can still easily make out my features. 

Despite my profession as a sports writer, I prefer to be out of the full spotlight while still getting some light shined on me. I feel the way this was done perfectly says that. I'm hiding in a way, but there is still that light shining on me because of me being a public figure.  

I absolutely loved working on this project. In fact, it was my favorite thing I've done in this class all semester long. I'm just ecstatic with how my final piece came out. To me, it's better than what I anticipated.