Title : The two faces of war
Size : 2ft x 2ft together 30.48 cm x 60.96cm (seperate) Medium : Acrylic paint on canvas Completion : December 2021 Exhibition text : Greek mythology has a large plethera of different gods and goddesses. sometimes some of them overlap a small bit, such as Ares & Athena. Both of these were gods of war, but for vastly different reasons. Ares is many about the brutality of war and Athena was the strategy. I wanted to portray this difference with this piece.
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Inspirations : My inspirations are Symolism because of what both the deities represent. Another inspiration is the "portrait of joseph roulin" by Vincent Van Gogh. mainly the pose & composition of it. the last inpiration was the portrayal of these deities in the game : Immortal Fenyx Rising
Planning /Experimentation : The first Idea I had was a Greek Myth. My first thought was the betrayal of Uranus & Kronos, But I didn't know how to portray these scenes properly. My next thought was the "Big Three" : Zeus,Posidon & Hades. I rejected this ideas because I felt I wouldn't be able to make three portraits in time & making a connection between them. Then I started to think of duos such as Apollo & Artemis or Ares & Athena. Apollo & Artemis besides being the sun & moon, for some reason didn't strike my intrests as much as Athena & Ares.
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This page focused on me figuring out how best to make them. I had already decided that they would be front facing like my inpiration. I had thought about the faces & remebered that Ares was constantly shown with a Spartan helmet. so I drew up some faces with the spartan helmet around it. Deciding that ares would have a not visible face besides his eyes is symbolic because death / death in war is often faceless & unknown. Athena needed to be the opposite. she too was portrayed often with a helmet. I wanted her face to be visible to contrast that of Ares. I also decided that her eyes to be blue which would contrast Ares's red eyes despite her have grey eyes. I toyed with the idea of adding a spear & sheild to them to sow more contrast, but that idea fell through. I then desided to give them a somewhat Art Nouveau-eque border with athena having the light & flowing lines, but Ares having sharp & jaged lines.
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This was where I tried to put the "final" image, or the one that I would trace. the main struggle was making the bodies, especially Athena. I looked up multple references of greek statues and artworks. I had also looked at photos of the from the video game, Immortal Fenyx Rising because they had style I was trying to find. I have never done well with making the female form, so making it look nice was a struggle, But i got it looking decent enough rather quickly.
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I projected the "final page" of my planning pages onto my canvas. I brought them home because I had a larger assortment of colors at my disposial, such as red,grey and brown which was not avalible without mixing at school. Having these colors without mixing was more for my convenience, it also allowed for different colors to quickly. I started working on ares first because he has much more darker colors so I wouldn't need to worry too much about accidently mix them on my pallete. the the most previlent color used was black, to both use normally and use to darken the brown and red.
Next I worked on Athena. I got somebody to show me how to mix together a general skin tone. So I painted both of them with the skin tone before doing more. I primarily worked on the smaller stuff first because I had the colors already out. Next I painted her armor grey and then let it dry.
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I added alot of shading detail to athena making it pop a bit more. I then mixed up the background colors and painted those. Athena had blue mixed with white compared to the black mixed red to further contrast the two. I then outlined most of their features with black to make them pop and mirror my style on pen and paper.
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Critique/Reflection : The piece is not good on the whole. Most of the colors are just flat with little to no shading done. The shading that is their is very hit or miss looking fine in one spot and looking lackluster in other spots. There is alot of spots where paint either overlaps or has white spots showing.There is also a ton of empty space near the top Because of this,the art overall suffers. But my history of painting is poor as well. Compared to my other paintings, the shading is far more advanced. there is also more coverarge of paint overall. So despite the amateur level work, it is quite advanced compared to my previous experiences.
Compare & Contrast :
Compare : Both pieces are portraits that are from a front facing perspective. They are also human/human-esque.
Contrast : The Inspiration piece is in a different art movement then mine and is only a single portrait rather then two. It also has for more detail then my own piece.
Compare : Both pieces are portraits that are from a front facing perspective. They are also human/human-esque.
Contrast : The Inspiration piece is in a different art movement then mine and is only a single portrait rather then two. It also has for more detail then my own piece.
Connection to ACT :
1.) The cause and effect relationship of my inspiration and my own work is apperent. The inspiration is a front facing upper body compisition. They both also have a large upper section that don't contain the main part of the artwork. This causes the style to mix together with my own style.
2.) The overall approach is "I want to paint men and women with that something of the eternal which the halo used to symbolize, and which we try to convey by the actual radiance and vibration of our coloring." Because of this, the artwork is apart of a set of 6. they all are a new style of portrait that he was trying to create.
3.) The generalization is that Van gogh saw in people was radient. he must have saw most or some people with radiance that many others don't see.
4.) The central idea was to figure out why he made it. every art piece has some meanin behind it and I wanted to understander why he made this one. If I figured out why he made it, I hoped it could help me get an idea of what to do with my own.
5.) The inferences that I saw was van gogh saw people differently. it may not have been everybody but he wanted to convey the vibrency of people through this new stlye of portrait.
1.) The cause and effect relationship of my inspiration and my own work is apperent. The inspiration is a front facing upper body compisition. They both also have a large upper section that don't contain the main part of the artwork. This causes the style to mix together with my own style.
2.) The overall approach is "I want to paint men and women with that something of the eternal which the halo used to symbolize, and which we try to convey by the actual radiance and vibration of our coloring." Because of this, the artwork is apart of a set of 6. they all are a new style of portrait that he was trying to create.
3.) The generalization is that Van gogh saw in people was radient. he must have saw most or some people with radiance that many others don't see.
4.) The central idea was to figure out why he made it. every art piece has some meanin behind it and I wanted to understander why he made this one. If I figured out why he made it, I hoped it could help me get an idea of what to do with my own.
5.) The inferences that I saw was van gogh saw people differently. it may not have been everybody but he wanted to convey the vibrency of people through this new stlye of portrait.
Bibliography : https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79105