Design Principles - Week 6 - 7

28/09/2021 - 05/10/2021 (Week 6 - Week 7)
Reagan Val Adelbert Mahadi / 0349177
Design Principles / Bachelor of Design in Creative Media
Project 1 / Self-Portrait
 

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LECTURES

For our sixth week in this module, Ms. Jinchi presented to us about self-portrait

Self-Portrait

Self consist of:

• How others see me (physical traits and personality)
• How I see myself (physical traits and personality)
• My experiences
• My interests
• My thoughts, etc

The self-portrait is a self-representation in the form of a drawing/painting/sculpture/design. It is a visual depiction of the self. A self-portrait artwork represents the designer/artist—in other words, how the artists see themselves, what they are feeling, and how they want to be seen by others.

Fig. 1.1 'Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird' by Frida Kahlo
(https://pixels.com/art/beautiful+hummingbird)

The best way to start self-portraiting is to create a mindmap. It can be used for brainstorming and deciding which one to focus on more on to create a self-portrait. 

Fig. 1.2 Example of a self mindmap
(https://id.pinterest.com/pin/133841420160304298/)

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INSTRUCTIONS

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Project 1: Self-Portrait

Visual Research

For our first project, we are told to create a self-portrait design. To find any ideas, I had to go to Pinterest and surf on google to find some interesting designs.

Fig. 2.1 Art by Daniel Taylor
(https://id.pinterest.com/pin/525232375301369284/)

Fig. 2.2 Self-portrait example
(https://www.artmajeur.com/it/maharitaszabrina/artworks/11435300/natural-self-portrait-v)

Fig. 2.3 Art by Shanghai Lily
(https://in.pinterest.com/pin/20758848259020107/)

Idea Exploration and Description

I created a mindmap for this project to know what idea I should come up with.

Fig. 2.4 My mindmap

I asked my friends from high school how they see me.

After making my mindmap I tried to create a sketch that tells me that I'm friendly (according to my friends) and came up with a sketch that has a similar design idea with Fig. 2.1.

Fig. 2.5 Self-portrait sketch 1

My sketch shows me being all friendly by expressing a smile there. There are also clouds and a little person there that represents the eyes and the nose. The little person inside there that is sitting represents me being an introvert having a relaxing moment while being alone in a peaceful place. I tried to recreate a peaceful scenery by adding the clouds and the grasses. 

Feedback

Instead of following directly from Fig. 2.1, Ms. Jinchi suggested I create my own design. She suggested I put the scenery inside my head instead of putting it in the eye area. She said that my sketch is too similar to Fig. 2.1. She asked me to do more sketches so that I can be more diverted yet still able to use my creativity to express my idea. She also mentioned I add the source for the images that I found on the internet.

After receiving feedback from Ms. Jinchi, I'm going to make another sketch for this project.

Fig. 2.6 Self-portrait sketch 2

I start digitizing this sketch.

Fig. 2.7 Self-portrait design

I added some shadings to my design. In my design, it shows a little person inside there. The broken texture in my design shows a scenery about a world inside my head. The little person represents me being an introverted person that is having time alone. Meanwhile, my face in the design shows that I'm being all friendly by giving a smile. In a nutshell, the design shows me being introverted on the inside while I'm being friendly on the outside (friendly towards other people).

Final Outcome

Fig. 2.8 Final self-portrait design - PDF

 

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REFLECTIONS

For my first project, it was quite a challenging one. It took me a long time to find images that I really like from the internet. Overall, I really like this project, I get to express myself just by creating a design. This project was quite challenging but it is still enjoyable at the very least.