AED200 - Project 5 - Portraits

I selected the pieces I did because they all use an unusual way to depict their own self image.  You can tell the image is of a person and it is intended to be a portrait, what makes them unique is how they area actually portrayed.

Vincent Van Gogh - Self-Portrait - 1887

Juan Gris - Portrait of Pablo Picasso - 1912

Giuseppe Arcimboldo - "Summer"  - 1572

I chose to use a mosaic style digital image because I have always enjoyed these types of pictures.  Also my lover for technology and the 40,000+ pictures I have helped me make this decision.

My only real challenge was finding other self portraits that reflected the theme I wanted to incorporate into my project.  Van Gogh has a similar style that is present in many of his portraits and I did not want to use 3 of his pieces.

What made this project work for me is how I chose to re-create my image.  The mosaics are all of my family, mainly my children.  These are the pieces that make up who I am and they will be the image of who I am through their self interpretation.  For the rest of my life they will make up the entirety of my life and I will be a template for them to pick and chose which pieces of me they wish to accept as their own and which pieces to change and make theirs.  It is symbolic and I think it holds the essence of what art can mean when outside influence shapes the creation.

1500 images - My Favorite of them

 This is my favorite mainly because the images of my kids is so much more prevelent.  It is a little hard to see when not its intended 8x10 size but you can easily see that I am a blurred figure behind them.  The more pictures the clearer the image, true, but it loses the meaning behind what I was shooting for,

Mainly I had to tweak my original image and retake the image in many different scenes to allow for a touch of color that stood out from my image while keeping the detail present in my original image.

I really liked this project, it gave me a chance to explore a deeper meaning behind the creation of a piece and allowed me to use a few digital editing tools I have never had the pleasure of using.  I would totally recommend the software "AndreaMosaic"  it is a free program that allowed me to transform my image into something meaningful.  There are tons of options that can allow for complete customization.

The final outcome is actually what I wanted.  I used a library of just over 10,000 images of my family and it really came out nice.  I included multiple images for you to see that range from 1,000 to 10,000 tiles using both landscape and portrait images to recreate the original image.