Digital Painting: "SIREN"

Digital Painting: "Siren", Reflection 

"Siren"

    For this project, my goal was to create a piece that I had connected with. Themes of love, sexuality, and elegance were at play here, and I wanted to paint those feelings. The Art Nouveau Style heavily inspired this work. I played with whiplash curves, botanical and natural motifs, and boldly showed intimacy and femininity. Art Nouveau painter, Alphonse Mucha and his painting, Summer (1896), would be the main influence for this entire piece. This painting would become a master study of what Art Nouveau was.

    My understanding of the assignment was to appropriate some photos and incorporate them into the work. My understanding of appropriation was the process of using one or several images and including them in the painting. According to Merriam-Webster, the act of appropriation is "to take or make use without authority or right".  I labelled 'reference photos' into the category of appropriation, so I had not directly collaged a photograph into my work. Instead, going along the lines of Jeff Koons' painting, Lips (2000), and a couple of David Hockney paintings shown in class, where a photograph was indirectly used for their work. 

    Photos taken directly online, as well as the painting from Mucha, Summer, were used to paint the jewelry and to fathom the colours. Art Nouveau was prolific for its naturalistic anatomy, so I had taken some photos of myself to better accurately draw the body (not anything of me in a seductive manner. I'm comfortable with myself, but not that comfortable). To precisely draw the figure, Mucha would trace over his subject's photographs, achieving his realistic portraiture. In my work, I had just followed the reference by eye.

"Summer" by Alphonse Mucha (1896)

This particular piece by Mucha was by far the most influential reference for my painting. Sometimes I thought to myself, if I were just straight-up copying it. From the subject matter, down to the plants, you can say that I am a fan.

This is obviously the reference for the hands. There was a reference for the feet as well, but that's a little too revealing.

The following photos are entirely of the jewelry for the arms, hands, and the head ornament:

ALTERNATIVE IDEAS:

    I ask myself what I could have done to better align my ideas to adhere more to the assignment's guidelines. One way would be to scrap the Siren idea entirely and start over. I find that starting over refreshes the mind, and it usually ends up better than before. I am thinking of using a previous sketch I had shown in a previous blog post of the dogs and the upper body of a man, and configuring that concept with the Art Deco movement rather than the Art Nouveau one. I can already see similarities in aesthetics and could work with the alternative concept to paint and collage personal and found photographs into the new idea. 

    Another alternative is to use the painting I already have and create a collage by overlaying the existing painting. Why not work with what I already have?

But alas, what I already have, I consider to be one of my more satisfying paintings to look at. I learned a lot of art history and digital painting techniques through the endless nights of working on finding a composition and getting frustrated over the colours. It was a fun journey in the end.