Not ordinary portraits

I didn't want my portraits to have one quality and what was just to show the emotion, I thought that's too bland and over done but as well as this I needed a way to show the rest of our features change over time so I thought I could create 6 photo montages, each one showing one of my 6 chosen emotions. I've done photo montage before and have always loved it, I don't create them digitally though, I take photos of my subject from different ranges then get the photos printed then physically put my montage together; I find this way easier, more entertaining to do and it gives the end result a more personal, hand made touch.

I wanted to use the different sized features and distortion to simulate the growth and change of the rest of our features while the eyes were changing because of the emotions.

David Hockney s a British artist who was an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960's. Hockney is recognised mainly for is photo montages.

This type of work gives a more exciting way of looking at a portrait of someone. It's recognizable yes distorted.  

I did look into more distortion work in the form of the paintings by Francis Bacon but I decided the montage would best represent growth and change rather than just movement.

Bacon's work did make me wonder if I wanted to incorporate paint into my work though. I thought I could emphasize the portraying emotion by using colour related paints and tones. I knew this could make my work become 'too into the ordinary' as colour and emotions are very often brought together but I tried some small mock ups to see what would happen. I was interested to see if the mix between painting and photography worked which then brought me onto a mixed media using artist called Bec Wonders.

This work is interesting, it;s very cyborg like and almost creepy. I'd like to do something like this for another project some time but as of now, I have bigger ideas for what I want to do for our 'Change' theme. 

Whilst still thinking about distorted portraiture I came across the Brazilian graffiti artist Andre Muniz Gonzaga and his work 'The distorted street faces'. Since 1997 he has been transforming some of the broken, cracked and ugly walls into strange, distorted faces in his unique style of street portraiture. 

His work gave me the idea of maybe taking my distorted portraits onto different locations. The locations could relate to the emotions which I'd be trying to portray with the portrait itself for example: A sad portrait could be taken of the model sat beside a hospital bed.

I quickly made some small, rough photo montages so I could test the emotional coloured painting technique over it.

I used my finger to pull the paint around the face. I do like the dramatic effect that comes along with the colour but I won't betaking this technique further because I feel as though the paint makes the image as a whole focus more on the emotion rather than the change in expression.