TATTOO PORTRAITS - CUBE INSTALLATIONS
‘The universality of tattooing is a curious subject for speculation’ - Captain James Cook
TATTOO PORTRAITS
For this project I intended to execute 25 final pieces by expanding my research and development for the Tattoo Portraits by still continuing with working with irregular cropped photographs compared to traditional portrait poses, nonetheless they are still oozing dominant everyday relations on how we are seen today again for example on Facebook or Twitter.
“One of the most interesting aspects of modern tattooing is in the way in which its designs have evolved to reflect the zeitgeist. As tattoo practise has become more widespread, techniques have become more refined, allowing artists to develop new skills and push the boundaries of what a tattoo is expected to look like.” (TATTOO ART - WRITTEN BY DORALBA PICERNO)
I have however left the soft pastels and concentrated on charcoal and chalk as this medium gives off a rawness no other medium can other me, using thin layers to creating a velvety surface. Allowing me to apply soft tones or hard lines where there needed. As the soft pastels grey colour can build up and lose that looseness of the drawings and wasn’t executing the rawness that made this technique uniquely interesting.
By reducing the material and retaining to definite rules, the portraits have a special quality about them, giving off warm subtle tones of the MDF hardboard seeping through the charcoal and chalk and giving you the skin volume and mass. Using the technique sfumato (ITALIAN), first applied to oil paintings by Leonardo Divinci in which one surface blends easily with another, also not producing hard thick lines.
The content submits portraits or with just feet, a foot or a pair of hands which looks very symbolic and monumental. I have chosen to do this because it makes the portraits stronger and in addition to this, a completely different perspective of the sitters tattoos. For example the arms are crossed as opposed to the legs being crossed and this is what makes it relate Renaissance monumental painting.
Furthermore I have added smaller MDF, 1ft x 1ft (SQUARED) to accompany the larger 2ft x 2ft (SQUARED) to add to the effect and does not diminish them. Which I can mix up and grid again with planning and caution. However Andy Harper’s (ARTIST TALK) work in which he hinges huge canvases together, so the audience has to walk as well as interact with them entirely, this intrigued me to how I could display my final pieces.
I have intended to add some taxidermia motifs such as crocodile skull, butterflies, moths, scorpions, spiders and arachnids to relate back to Victorian sailors bringing back souvenirs from their exotic travels. On the contrary it could diminish the portraits as there are quite visually interesting and work on their own and could take away the emphasise of the purpose of what I’m creating. This would have to be thought out properly and thoroughly.
I anticipated to hinge the portraits together, creating a snake like effect on the floor (SEE APPENDIX B & C), but found this too daunting and not visually interesting as the back are mucky due to not permanently fixing the portraits as I wanted to do an installation of some sort. As your natural oil from the hands can mark the work and once fixed you can not go back over to fix it and cannot remove the mark.
Boldly I took ten of the larger portraits and assembled them into two cubes using five portraits each and only showing five sides of the cube. In which I had to flush the sides, top and bottom of each portrait by using sixteen 5cm x 1cm wood wedges of each one glued to the back and braces to screw into the wood wedges permanently to fix the portraits together as the actual portrait MDF hardwood itself is only 6mm thick, (SEE APPENDIX D).
In the majority of the series I have drawn the viewers eye beyond the picture plane of just looking at a face but how else are we represented and revealed. Furthermore I have create a portrait installation in which I have not achieved before and in amazing successful in appearance and endurance, (SEE APPENDIX E). I have tried to mimic what I see and employed an atmospheric perspective of each sitter and created a sophisticated way of displaying tattoos in portraiture.
TATTOO PORTRAITS
For this project I intended to execute 25 final pieces by expanding my research and development for the Tattoo Portraits by still continuing with working with irregular cropped photographs compared to traditional portrait poses, nonetheless they are still oozing dominant everyday relations on how we are seen today again for example on Facebook or Twitter.
“One of the most interesting aspects of modern tattooing is in the way in which its designs have evolved to reflect the zeitgeist. As tattoo practise has become more widespread, techniques have become more refined, allowing artists to develop new skills and push the boundaries of what a tattoo is expected to look like.” (TATTOO ART - WRITTEN BY DORALBA PICERNO)
I have however left the soft pastels and concentrated on charcoal and chalk as this medium gives off a rawness no other medium can other me, using thin layers to creating a velvety surface. Allowing me to apply soft tones or hard lines where there needed. As the soft pastels grey colour can build up and lose that looseness of the drawings and wasn’t executing the rawness that made this technique uniquely interesting.
By reducing the material and retaining to definite rules, the portraits have a special quality about them, giving off warm subtle tones of the MDF hardboard seeping through the charcoal and chalk and giving you the skin volume and mass. Using the technique sfumato (ITALIAN), first applied to oil paintings by Leonardo Divinci in which one surface blends easily with another, also not producing hard thick lines.
The content submits portraits or with just feet, a foot or a pair of hands which looks very symbolic and monumental. I have chosen to do this because it makes the portraits stronger and in addition to this, a completely different perspective of the sitters tattoos. For example the arms are crossed as opposed to the legs being crossed and this is what makes it relate Renaissance monumental painting.
Furthermore I have added smaller MDF, 1ft x 1ft (SQUARED) to accompany the larger 2ft x 2ft (SQUARED) to add to the effect and does not diminish them. Which I can mix up and grid again with planning and caution. However Andy Harper’s (ARTIST TALK) work in which he hinges huge canvases together, so the audience has to walk as well as interact with them entirely, this intrigued me to how I could display my final pieces.
I have intended to add some taxidermia motifs such as crocodile skull, butterflies, moths, scorpions, spiders and arachnids to relate back to Victorian sailors bringing back souvenirs from their exotic travels. On the contrary it could diminish the portraits as there are quite visually interesting and work on their own and could take away the emphasise of the purpose of what I’m creating. This would have to be thought out properly and thoroughly.
I anticipated to hinge the portraits together, creating a snake like effect on the floor (SEE APPENDIX B & C), but found this too daunting and not visually interesting as the back are mucky due to not permanently fixing the portraits as I wanted to do an installation of some sort. As your natural oil from the hands can mark the work and once fixed you can not go back over to fix it and cannot remove the mark.
Boldly I took ten of the larger portraits and assembled them into two cubes using five portraits each and only showing five sides of the cube. In which I had to flush the sides, top and bottom of each portrait by using sixteen 5cm x 1cm wood wedges of each one glued to the back and braces to screw into the wood wedges permanently to fix the portraits together as the actual portrait MDF hardwood itself is only 6mm thick, (SEE APPENDIX D).
In the majority of the series I have drawn the viewers eye beyond the picture plane of just looking at a face but how else are we represented and revealed. Furthermore I have create a portrait installation in which I have not achieved before and in amazing successful in appearance and endurance, (SEE APPENDIX E). I have tried to mimic what I see and employed an atmospheric perspective of each sitter and created a sophisticated way of displaying tattoos in portraiture.