Slice Em' and Dice Em'

FRACTURED FRONTAL PORTRAITS

INTERMEDIATE 2-D ART

oil and water-based pastel, poster and matt board

These are 3 extraordinary pieces I will show off today by 3 of my top award winning senior artists this year.

The assignment was to find an interesting frontal subject, enlarge it with pastel and fracture the piece in some way, then to mount it on poster/matt board.

Each of these solutions are unique and well thought out.

And the drawing and pastel techniques, superb!

I will begin with Jasmine Zhao.

First of all her subject was beautiful with intense penetrating eyes.

Jasmine worked in water pastels and chose to fracture with a piece of filigree cut poster board.

And yes, she cut out all those tiny fine lines herself with extreme patience.

Out of all the hundreds of pieces we had up in the room at Open House, this work received the most awe inspiring attention.

You didn't know that did you Jasmine  :)

In this next work by senior Anne Allan, she also worked in the water pastels using a couple different techniques as you will see in the close-ups.

She chose to fracture by simply using 3 different portraits that she felt complimented each other when she overlapped them.

Very clever how she set them at an angle.

I wish I had a close-up of the dimensional butterfly at the top with eyes.

Such a cool touch!

Notice in these two close-ups that she is touching the paper with the tip of her pastels in different ways.  

In the top piece it's a precise shorter stroke, almost pointillist in some places, while in the one below she is using longer, curved strokes that are not as tight as in the face above.

That's the beauty of Anne, extremely versatile.

And lastly senior Cathy Luo blows us away with this thought provoking piece in which she includes a bit of text.

Besides being a tremendous design effort, Cathy has also chosen to use both the oil and water-based pastels in this fracture.  

Can you tell the difference?

Usually the oil pastels tend to be more dynamic and intensely bright and dimensional.

The water have a much softer look.

I am so proud of these students.

They worked so very hard for me the entire year, always giving me everything they had.

Thanks you guys!