Fall 2022
Collage
Watercolor paint, acrylic paint, tea, coffee, pages from a novel, pages from an art history book, coffee bags, foil tea bags, brown ink, dried Gingko leaves, sharpie, micron pen
backing: Bristol Board 13in x 17 in
About this project: For this project, we were required to do a self-portrait collage including at least one item from the kitchen, as well as some parts painted. I had several ideas of the things I might use-coffee and tea being chief among them, as an enthusiast of both.
I flipped through some art history books I had and selected some colors that I really liked and began piecing some basic shapes like the hair and the shirt. I used a sharpie and a micron pen to add a bit of hair texture to the shape of the hair. For the face and skin, I decided to use pages from a novel because I read a lot and I thought I’d have a fun go at painting skin tone with coffee.
I used white (and slight red) acrylic for the eyes, drawing pupils on some cutout pieces. The face I gradually colored using coffee as watercolor-layering to get the shading. For the shadows under the eyes, I used blackberry tea, and raspberry tea to help give a red tint.
I knew I had painted but I still wanted to add some background and painting to the composition so I cleaned some coffee bags I was finished with and used those as the background, painting them a few different colors and attaching them to the Bristol Board. At the very end, I added the dried Gingko leaves because they added a little more interest and I love Ginkgo leaves (that’s why I had some dried leaves laying around).
While I generally dislike self-portraits, at least of myself, I am happy with how this turned out. It feels like it encompasses a lot of my personality.
