Self portraits

Our assignment IAR 101 this week was to mount a display of 8 (!) self portraits. No limits were placed on the materials we could use. The total floorspace of each display could be no more than 3.24 square feet (e.g. an 18" X 18" square).

This exercise was very challenging for me. I took 7 very different approaches. (Two were variations.) My vision definitely exceeded my skills! April suggested that each sketch take no more than 30 minutes. At first I took a lot longer than that, but then I stayed within the limit. That freed me up to go with an idea and not stress so much about "being perfect". I sure admire Jake, Suzanne , and others who can whip up interesting, accurate, lively sketches in a few minutes. I'd like to get to that point so that I can add a visual component to my daily journals and the ones I keep for our family.
So here they are:

The center is my own, using a mirror. The top is after an Art Nouveau picture I found. The bottom is inspired by Picasso's Blonde Model.


This is a mix of drawing and a photo.

Another Mobius iteration. This time as a piece of playground equipment.

The words on the right are from a Mary Oliver poem, The Summer Day. "...I don't know exactly what a prayer is/ I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down/ into the grass, how to kneel down in the the grass/ how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields/Which is what I have been doing all day/ Tell me, what else should I have done?/ Doesn't everything die at last and too soon?/Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?"

This is Diana the Huntress who captivated me in my nature, wood-nymph youth. And Diana Rigg, who played Emma Peele on The Avengers. She was smart, independent, mysterious, and she was no damsel in distress. She could fight and shoot a gun. And she looked great in leather. Another childhood hero.

These two are plays on Norman Rockwell's "Three Self-Portraits". It's about my self delusions on a good day and on a bad day. The figures in the good day are Georgia O'Keeffe, Jane Goodall (another childhood hero), and Johnny Depp. On the bad day, the Wicked Witch of the West, Shrek, and a very fat cat.


Part of my psyche--do I act from fear or reason?

My stand is made from wood and dowels; the drawings are attached with clothes pins. I was thinking of self-portraits as a kind of "airing your dirty [or not] laundry" and wanted the stand to resemble a small wooden clothes-drying rack.