APD Week 1 - Play & Observation

By Ben Mansur

Theme:

Play & Observation - to capture the essence of something, or to unlock something new. How do we, as individual practitioners, observe the world, and how do we each express that?

Method:

I will create a self-portrait based on the observations of my classmates. They will write one or two words that describe my physical attributes or personality based on their observations of me and I will incorporate those elements into the self-portrait.

Context:

A suggestion for this week’s response was to create a playful self portrait through any of medium, highlighting what we observe about ourselves. This year I began drawing a new profile picture for social media each month, using a new drawing style each time. One of my inspiration for this was Pablo Picasso’s series of self-portraits over his career that each takes a different stylistic approach to visually representing himself.

After Helen reminded me of the Dove “Real Beauty Sketches”, where an artist draws people once through that person’s observations and again through a stranger’s observations, I decided to let the observations of my classmates direct my next self-portrait, as my previous collection of self-portraits contain elements of my own observations.

Pablo Picasso Self Portraits

https://mymodernmet.com/pablo-picasso-self-portraits/

Dove Real Beauty Sketches

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=litXW91UauE

Response:

A gif self-portrait that expresses my classmate’s observations of my personality and physical appearance.

Observations included:

A lot of Corporal expression (especially with the hands)
Always puts his hand in his pocket
Approachable
Cheeky grin
Cheerful energy
Coffee colour
Enthusiastic
Freckles
Hoodie made with 4 types of clothes
Luscious stubble
Maintains eye contact
Wave like hair 🌊

Unused Observations:

Always willing to help
Calming
Energetic
LEGO hair (absolutely loved this one)
Mature
Never disappointed
Sits with crossed legs

Reflection:

I enjoy finding out other people’s perceptions of myself, so it was fun to hear my classmate’s observations. Receiving a lot of observations of my personality helped push me towards creating a short animated gif to help capture more of those elements, although I was secretly hoping for more physical observations.

In the spirit of play, I tried creating a short GIF animation, something that I haven't actually attempted previously. I also sought to work quickly with only one rough iteration to convey a sense of liveliness in the self-portrait, keeping the poses and movements strong and expressive, and allowing the linework to remain loose and suggestive. If I were to follow my usual habit of multiple rough iterations, I feel the sense of movement would have felt more restricted and robotic as I tend to contract the pose between iterations.

In hindsight, it would have been interesting to ask people to draw a quick sketch of me in a short time frame to highlight the key observations they make about my appearance and personality. Alternately I could have asked people to draw one element of my face and stitch them all together in a collage portrait. That said, I’m really happy with the observations of personality that I was able to incorporate into the portrait.