Wednesday 6 November 2013

Puzzle Portrait

“The human race is like a puzzle: Everyone fits in somewhere, it just takes a while to figure it out” - Jen Leaman. 
I thought it would be interesting to paint a portrait on a blank jigsaw puzzle. Initially, I wanted to remove the pieces after I had finished the painting, but instead I decided to do that using Photoshop. 
The Androgynous figure, is like an incomplete puzzle, the subject neither looks male or female. The psychology behind removing the pieces is to show that ''incompleteness''. It was quite challenging to draw and paint my self-portrait without getting confused from the many puzzle pieces. I tried to focus only on the image and ignore them. The colours also reminded me, for some reason, of the colours in Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. This could be perhaps that I have been studying him for my dissertation. It also reminds me of the Christian byzantine icons, with a more contemporary approach however.
Overall, I like the concept and may work more with it in the future.