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?
