My Self-Portrait piece " Dear Diary, " is inspired primarily by Peisi Thanatos "Gluttony" piece. This piece is supposed to convey how my emotions have a very great impact on my appetite. My moods tend to come in very strong waves and affect me greatly, when this happens to me I tend to either over-eat or under-eat without really noticing it. The flower in my mouth is supposed to kind of represent how I want to block myself from over-eating or under-eating. To kind of step back for a second, calm myself and eat a normal amount of food without me over or under doing it.
Inspirations: Peisi Thanatos
Peisi Thanatos is a 24 year-old painter from Sao Paulo, Brazil. She is a self-learned artist who tends to paint a lot of self-portraits of herself and different people. My main inspiration for my Self-Portrait is Peisi Thanatos. Specifically, her canvas painting "Gluttony". I chose this piece as my main inspiration for my Self-Portrait because in "Gluttony" it's meant to represent over consumption of food, over-eating. When I saw this piece, I was able to really relate to it, especially on a personal level. I don't over-eat, I actually have a bad tendency of under-eating due to my mood, and then at random times, binge eating, depending on my state of mind and how I'm feeling. I wanted to incorporate this into my Self-Portrait because it's a major part of who I am.
" Gluttony"
Sketches & Planning
When planning out a self-portrait I already knew I'd need to really look at myself closely. Focus on my main physical features, and even my minor ones. Starting off, I needed to really look at a bunch of pictures of myself, and I needed to look at myself in the mirror (a lot.) When sketching out my face into my sketchbook, I sat in front of a mirror and continuously looked up and drew what I saw. After a few minutes this got exhausting. So, I took a picture of myself and sketched that picture of me into my sketchbook.
After sketching out many drawings of me, I chose my favorite one and decided to use it for my final product. After doing so, I noticed that the main focus of the painting, the flower was going to cause me some difficulties down the line. To try and help myself with those difficulties, I began by sketching out flowers to see if practicing flowers would help make my final product flower look good so it doesn't ruin my overall self-portrait. After some practice, I then knew I was ready to begin working on my canvas.
Process
Beginning my process, I initially started blocking in the subject's surroundings. I already knew that I wanted my background to look exactly the same as the background Pesisi has in her self-portrait. So, I used acrylic paints and sort of made them into a watercolor so it'd be easier to spread, and so I could do many layers of it. We can notice that the colors she used aren't only a pink, purple and black. There are even more colors incorporated into those primary ones such as; blacks, whites and even a small hint of blue. While my paint was still wet, I was able to include those other colors as well.
After doing my background, I then started out by sketching the original planned sketch I had in my sketchbook. I knew I had to scale this up a lot more in order to have it fit onto my canvas, so I began by sketching out the grid method. The grid method sincerely helped me in scaling this image up a lot larger going from a 4x3 scale all the way to a 25x25 scale. After I sketched my drawing out using the grid method, I erased the excess lines from the grid method.
Once I had completed my sketch, I began by starting with my eyes. When doing my eyes, I wanted to get them as detailed as my real eyes are. My eyes tend to look very exhausted all the time, I've had this comment from many of my close friends and family as well. It's really a major part of my physical features. I included some light hues of pink and brown under my eyes to sort of bring out the affect of "exhaustion" in my eyes. I blended out those hues of light pinks and reds to my original skin tone for my face so it didn't look so blocky.
I finished my face, skin tone, shirt, and other specific physical features, I then moved along to my hair. Painting my hair was the hardest part of my self-portrait to really convey right. My hair isn't one primary color, it has a lot of different shades of other colors. The ends of my hair are a very light blonde and white. Including my highlights into my self portrait was extremely difficult. Blending out the colors yellow, white with the colors of brown and black were extremely difficult. It took multiple layers to do.
Moving on from my hair, I then proceeded to work on the detail of the main focus of my painting, the flower in my mouth. Doing the flower, was difficult. I will admit, I could have done a much better job on the flower, but I've never painted a flower before and practicing in my sketchbook was so difficult in itself. I tried my best to work out those details of the flower but it was difficult to really replicate.
Critique:
Similarities: Some similarities that we can immediately notice is the flower. The flower in my mouth is the main focus of my painting, it's what really brings my painting together and conveys the overall message of over and under eating. It correlates to the same flower that Peisi used in her self-portrait as well. Another similiarity we can take away is the background. I wanted my self-portrait to look highly similiar to my inspirations self-portrait so I used the exact same background as her with the exact same colors as well. Differences: Some differences that we can notice is that I didn't really paint my physical features too similar to Pesisi's. I tried my best to really bring out the same brush strokes that are evident in her physical features, but on my self-portrait it doesn't look too similiar at all really. Another difference is that although I incorporated the same flower in my piece, it doesn't have too much detail and movement as the flower in her piece does. My flower doesn't have enough detail or movement as her flower does and I feel as though I should have tried to make it a bit more detailed as hers.
Reflection:
In all honesty, doing this self-portrait was actually extremely difficult for me to make. I've never done a self-portrait of myself before. Doing one for the first time actually made me very really fixate on myself a lot, it actually made me slightly uncomfortable. The overall message that I was trying to convey in this self portrait as well really made it a bit hard for me to actually paint as well. Sometimes I tend to feel very shameful of me over-eating and under-eating without actually realizing, so portraying this and including it into my self-portrait was very difficult for me to follow through with. It was very hard because usually I never viewed my eating habits as a major part of who I am, but now that I truly thought about it before doing my self-portrait I've realized that in the end it actually is a major part of who I am. So, finally realizing that and kind of accepting it has made me slightly uncomfortable and bit emotional but not too shameful.
ACT Connections:
1) Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork? Between my inspiration and my work, you can clearly see the cause of my inspiration on my artwork, primarily evident in the colors used and main emphasis on the flower in the mouth of the painting. The effect of the flower in my painting is able to represent the urge to try and get myself to eat no matter my mood.
2) What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration? I feel as though my inspiration would be highly satisfied with the topic of my self-portrait. It correlates to the same meaning as my inspirations, but more of the opposite effect of eating. Over-eating - Under-eating..
3) What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration? When researching for my inspiration in regards to mental health, eating habits, there seems to be a reoccurring theme. Usually dark colors/tones were very evident in some inspirations, food being converted into something else, (in my inspiration, food being converted to a flower.)
4) What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research? Eating disorders, primarily in my inspirations painting, she has the struggle of over-eating so she tries to hold back from over-eating.
5) What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research? Choosing the topic of under or over-eating would result in some depictions of an empty plate, starvation, etc that could possibly be triggering for not only myself but other viewers.
MLA Citations
https://www.saatchiart.com/peisithanatos Gluttony painting. Saatchi Art. (n.d.). Retrieved March 15, 2023, from https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Painting-gluttony/1506875/9654473/view