For art we had to do a large project about “who am I”. It started with van Gogh, Gaughain, Judith Leyster and Siquieros. These four are all very famous painters, who painted much self-portraits. They all have a different way of drawing. Van Gogh uses much stripes. Gaughain makes pictures with very different colours and also sometimes stripes. Judith Leyster just draws herself. Siquieros makes complicated pictures with very much things in it.
By art and writing you better get to know yourself. It is very important to know who you really are. If you don’t know, you can’t have a chance to get to know someone else. In art, you really come to know yourself, because you draw what you like the most. You can also see this by the way you draw, which kind of methods you use and which feelings you express.
Of course, at every moment of time you feel different. Even in one day you can have different feelings. The biggest differences you can see between periods in your whole life. When you were young, you could be very outgoing and can be very busy. When you get older, you will be less outgoing and more calmer. You can show these aspects in a self-portrait.
Vincent van Gogh
He wanted to show his brother how far he got in his life. When he draw this painting he was clearly happy. You can see this by the colours he used for the background and himself. He used light colours, as very light blue and white. Ifhe wouldn’t be that happy, he would probably have used more dark colours.
He drew two paintings with different emotions. The first one with bright colours is already very sad, the one with the darker colours is even more sad. I personally really like his style with those stripes. The painting with the stripes erased is not very good. It is like a beautiful van Gogh painting, but then made more ugly by erasing. It is very vague, you can’t even clearly see van Gogh. It is like I am looking at a van Gogh painting without glasses.
I think he looks more calmer in the drawing with the light blue background.
The most distinctive qualities of Van Gogh are very much things here are two of them:
· The first one is: the colour contrast he uses. He really knows how to use colours in a very good way. You can always see in his paintings the contrast between the background and the front. This is very handy, because there is no confusion of what is on the front and what on the back.
· The second distinctive quality is: the stripes he uses in his paintings. This quality is very good used by him, because you can clearly see the shadow.
Gauguin.
I read the excerpts about Gauguin I really didn’t understand them. Nevertheless I can tell something about the drawing of him which you can change colour.
With the green colour in his face, the painting looks very different. Without the green, it looks like he is happy, with the green part he looks really sad. With the green, he describes himself a bit sad and on the dark side. Without the green, he expresses himself like he is very happy when he drew this.
Judith Leyster
You can say about Judith Leyster that she is very creative and skilled, because of the beautiful paintings she makes. When I first looked at this painting, I thought she was rich and successful. This is because of the clothes she wears, they look really expensive. She also looks proud because of the drawing she just made. She really doesn’t look shy and neither self-confident.
Siqueiros
I looked at one of his paintings and I can tell something about it. I can’t clearly see what kind of job he is doing, but I can see he is not painting. You can see this because there isn’t any brush or colour pallet to see. I can also see he just banged with his fist on the table.He is thinking about something bigger, because he smashes with his fist on the table. This means that he wants something to get clear to someone. It also looks like he is looking at something or someone.
Conclusion
Why do artists make self-portraits?
They like to show the people how the artists feel, if they are happy, sad, outgoing etc. The artists also like to show themselves to other people. The artists also want to have a look at themselves, how they express themselves. They also make self-portraits to let the people compare their drawings, and to be memorised after their death.
