Halloween Special 2

While I am working on my Halloween costume, I am also working on a project combining arts, photography and fashion.

With a wide range of costumes, put together with anything I already had at home, and the help of a ->photographer I am about to create a series of photographs.

Although this is around the time of Halloween, I didn't want to focus on typical monsters and a dark, horrific atmosphere. 

To make something different, I wanted to experiment with more or less normal clothing or surroundings but give them a surrealistic, dark or simply stunning twist.

I will show some photos on my ->Instagram account and in a sereis of posts on this Blog I will - as always - explain my intentions and techniques of my art.

As my theatre teacher always said, it is not important for an artist, that people will easily understand their artwork. On this Blog, however, I want to inspire people and help them to create their own artworks, so I'll explain a little.

Unexpectedly, it got colder and I had to change my plans. In a warmer outfit, I will show you my recently created hat.

2. "Lady with apple and hat"

Who's this crazy auntie?
To bring out the most awesome hat in the world (my new creation, the fruit hat), I dressed in basic, modern every-day clothes with an elegant touch.
The I went to the market, looked for fruits and ... let the crazy, fun shoot begin!

 The Lady with the fruit hat loves fruits and sells them at a market. She is a very serious business woman. Don't try to mess with her precious fruits.

Of course she's also a lady, so she takes her time to look elegant when she walks through the market.

Her taste of fashion is classic and extravagant, the fruit hat is her most special item. Although it looks like a little umbrella...

When she needs a break from all the demanding customers, she rests at a quiet place.

Wait... she secretly eats her own fruits?

 She seems to think that noone sees her... Her expressions are not very lady-like here... What a crazy auntie

Omo, now she has been caught! What to do?

BONUS:
At a public place it is simply a given to keep it clean of all garbage:

Halloween Special 1

While I am working on my Halloween costume, I am also working on a project combining arts, photography and fashion.
With a wide range of costumes, put together with anything I already had at home, and the help of a ->photographer I am about to create a series of photographs.
Although this is around the time of Halloween, I didn't want to focus on typical monsters and a dark, horrific atmosphere. 
To make something different, I wanted to experiment with more or less normal clothing or surroundings but give them a surrealistic, dark or simply stunning twist.

While I will show some photos on my ->Instagram account, in a sereis of posts on this Blog I will - as always - explain my intentions and techniques of my art.
As my theatre teacher always said, it is not important for an artist, that people will easily understand their artwork. On this Blog, however, I want to inspire people and help them to create their own artworks, so I'll explain a little.

Today, I will show you a concept which is not as outrageous as the ones that will follow, just as a start.

1. "The 10.000$ funeral"

 "Her husband died. The celebrity is waiting for the funeral to start."

 "Who is she glancing at at the funeral of her husband???"

 "Husband of celebrity dies in tragic accident"

"Widow is left with a huge sum of money"

This could be starts of articles in magazines, right? Exactly this is what I intended. My portrayal of a no-name celebrity on the funeral of her "beloved" and extremely rich husband is entirely satirical.
I don't want to critizise any real celebrity on funerals, but rather I chose this extreme example to not only critizise but also SHOW the struggle of celebrities to escape the public eye, their sometimes fake-looking emotions and also the hastily judging press.

To portray a high-class widow, I combined the finest pieces of jewelry and black clothing for my outfit. Of course, sunglasses and dripped mascara had to be included. The old-fashioned fascinator and gloves and overall black clothing give the impression of a widow in grief, whereas the jewelry and bright red lipstick hint to her intention to stand out, still be the centre of attention in the media.

To make these photos appear as normal as possible, as if this ould have really happened, I chose not to include any dramatic effects and also keep the location of the shoot as normal as possible. 
The surreal undertone is merely concentrated in the emotion shown on the face which stands in contrast to the suggested context (funeral).
Just once I experimented a little and turned a picture into a negative. A simple change, but I found it worked well with the subject, colours and perspective:

BONUS
After the shoot I went for a coffee. Certainly, I was the centre of attention on this day which was totally a bonus effect to my portrayal of a unspecific celebrity attending private affairs in public. 

This part of the project focuses on the subject, theme and interpretation of the pictures rather than on an outstanding look, but in the next few posts I will show you stunning compositions and unbelievable realities ;)

Style Challenge 2

My last Style Challenge focused on Cartoons, this time I want to try something new!
For this Challenge I'm going to use a picture of me as a reference and redraw it in different, known artistic styles of the 19th and 20th century. I will try to keep it as close as possible to the photo but also include topics and methods that were portrayed in the past.
Can you recognize some or all of the styles? 
Let me know which one is your favourite!

I attempted to revive eight different styles, the picture in the center is my own art style these days.

This is me:

I had to make lots of compromises when it came to the style, topics and materials of the times, but that was the fun challenge to it. For some I recreated the themes and style, for some only the materials and drawing techniques to combine aspects of my portrait and of the art styles, so not all might be accurately portrayed.

Expressionism

With the chisel tip of a black Copic marker I tried to resemble the unique style of woodcuts and I felt so free and added some background.
The topics portrayed in this "era" of the early 1900s were dark and real (e.g. war and prostitution but also biblical references). I used works of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff as a reference because he created woodcuts with people in it. To make my face look rougher and make the feel of it darker and more real I reinforced some shadows and wrinkles in my face.

Art Nouveau

I used Copic markers in soft, brown and peach tones and a brown liner to recreate the soft look of these romantic looking pictures.
Floral patterns and ornaments decorated the medieval-looking women. Unlike their faces which were realistically drawn, their hair sometimes was kept more simple, cartoon-like. As the medieval times were used as a role model in this style, I used a ornamelntal and floral bow to resemble church windows and emphazise the unique romantic style in my portrait.

Dada

This is a strange art style which originated in poems. It is even stranger to try and create a portrait in this style because Dada is based on coincidences. To recreate this interesting aspect, I sketched a portrait of me as I normally would (which is nothing like this style) but then I picked the colours I used randomly (which is the same method which was used to name this style by the way).
To keep a realistic look, I seperated the dark, medium and light shades so I could shade my drawing but I picked each Copic marker blindly: one of each for each part (face, hair, make up, eyes and one for rouge).

Impressionism

It is evenly strange to only paint a portrait in this style. I also cheated a little here and used only the drawing materials and method of this style, not including the topics portrayed and the style.
Instead of just drawing the colours I see, I sketched my portrait beforehand and drew what I was. But to keep the impressionistic feeling, I used pure acrylic colours and tapped them on, mixing them only on the paper.

Kubism (analytic)

Although most of you might know Picasso and his paintings, you might not know of this unique style of his. Using his painting "Ambroise Vollard" as a reference, I recreated my portrait in my favourite kubistic style.
To keep the feeling of a relief I used brown and peach coloured pencils. 

Minimal Art

Actually this was a style mostly used for objects, but the general thought was to reduce the forms and colours to simple elements.
This is hard to portray in a portrait that I still wanted to resemble me, so I only drew some outlines with pigment liner to keep it simple yet artistic.

Pop Art

This is the style you most likely recognized, even if you don't know much about art. Since it is very popular to know, it worked. The thought was to portray trivial pop culture, so most portraits were duplicated many times or drawn as if the person was a cartoon character. Which is what I did. I used pigment liner and markers to recreate the strong colours and lines of catroons.

Surealism

To create a surealistic portrait really was a challenge, since this style portrayed dreams and the subconcious. It created a strange atmosphere through connecting things that don't have a connection in real life.
In the end I used two pictures as a reference, even including the clock of my favourite surrealistic artist, Salvador Dalí. In the other picture I used, the artist René Magritte drew some humans and I used this style as a reference for drawing my face.
Eventhough I should only draw my face, I had to include things that would look ridicoulus together, so I also included the grammophone of that drawing.
I used coloured pencils for this drawing since I can't really handle oil, which was most commonly used.

I hope you enjoyed this artistic experiment!
I had so much fun recreating all those styles I admire, maybe I could inspire you to do the same?