Xerox Project - "Self Portrait"

I was inspired by Salvador Dali's skull portraits and Giuseppe Arcimboldo's still life portraits for this project. I thought that since I am using xerox copies of my self, I should decontextualize them and make them something else, just like Dali and Arcimboldo did.

                              
                                                            Guiseppe Arcimboldo

                                               
                                                                  Salvador Dali

I ended up making my project very similar to the Arcimboldo's flower portrait.

                                                                The final product

Here are some close ups:

I decided to use my hair as the background because, as I am blonde, it showed up really well coming from the machine. There was a lot of hair that I cut out and I didn't know what to do with it. I thought I should take up the space of the whole board, so I made it the background.

I used my hands and arms for the clothes because I liked the way my arms could drape around the neck and chest. They also take up a lot of space and as the fingers dangle, I thought it mimicked the furs on a coat.

I used my facial body parts for the neck and face because they were small and could arrange into lines and look cool on top of each other. Big parts would be hard because the face is such a detailed surface. I used my open mouth for a rosy cheek, a side view of my lips for the top lip, and fingers for the nose (with a mouth shadow) and bottom lip. For the eyes, the eyeballs are fingernails and the out line is part of my separated fingers.

For the hair, I used my hands again because I had a lot left over. They also had a good form enough to make a cool spiky 'do.  I xeroxed some of my money that I had just because, and I thought the coins and bills would make good hair accessories.

When I was finished, you could not really tell what was what because there were so many layers, so I had to color it to tell. The coloring didn't work that well because you could see the glue and cardboard texture imprint. Also, I was using Prismacolor Verithin colored pencils and I usually do not like them as much as the regular Prismacolors. I think these make the color too light. The composition is better seen from a close distance because the colors are not super saturated.

Overall, I think I did okay with this project. I think it turned out good, but I planned for better. The arrangement was difficult because I would find the perfect arrangement, but then I had to take it off to glue it down. I wanted some things to overlap so I had to un-glue somethings to make that happen. The cutting was the most laborious tai though. I had around 50 sheets and it took me two days of cutting to get each body part perfectly cut out.

The thing I like about this concept is that each of my body parts has been decontextualized; my hands and arms become a jacket and my eyes, nose, ad mouth become my skin. It is just a cool idea. I also like that even thought this piece does not look like me, it is still a self portrait because it is made of me.