Elin Anderson: Process - Watercolor Self Portrait

For my first watercolor class, we were given the classic assignment of self portrait. However this self portrait had to show aspects of our left and right brain way of thinking. The right brain is the side that is creative and the left is logical, so they say. I decided to incorporate some symbolism into my idea since I just love that kind of stuff. It’s interesting how symbolism in art has fallen out of favor so much in our generation. Now it’s all about concept- which is not really my favorite thing. But, I digress.

I first made a few sketches and finally chose one idea that stood out. It was to have a large figure 8 made out of drapery to symbolize infinity (I just like drapery) and then have myself looking out of the figure 8. In the background would be date palms and in the lower part of the figure 8 would be transfers of Greek mythological figures representing logic and “the order.” They would be next to a large drawing of a necklace of mine which has Egyptian hieroglyphs on it. (I love ancient Egypt!) So the “right brain side” would be the date palms and the necklace which kind of show my creativity and the more curious side of me. I also decided to have a large delta triangle as a symbol to emphasize the point of change in my life.

I set about sketching onto my watercolor paper. Sorry the faint 5H lines don’t show up too well. The figure 8 came out nicely, but I was having problems with the portrait side of myself. I wanted to go realistic but due to time constraints I ended up changing myself to look more “comic” style. I did a lot of sketching for a watercolor assignment. When I’m done the pencil will hardly be visible, but no matter.

At this point I added the transfers. Some slight discoloration occurred because of the pen I used but no matter. When you do transfers you can either use a chartpak marker or I actually used fingernail polish (with acetone). I find that chartpak markers are more difficult to use for transfers, plus they are expensive and run out quickly for this use. I love Arabic, so I added Arabic writing on the sides (they are poems) to also symbolize creativity.

With the drawing done, I had a first critique and received a lot of good advice from my peers about how I should do the coloring.

Before starting on the color, I did some small studies to see how it would look. When I have the time I usually do this before throwing myself into uncharted waters.