Hi, I'm 64

Second Term Project 2015

THEME:    Portrait

MEDIUM: Acrylic (Dala), Acrylic Retarder, Paper Mache, Newspaper, Cardboard, Duct Tape

ARTIST;   Cari van Niekerk (me)

"Pictures capture the moments and the memories. Paintings capture the emotion and the soul."

     -Cari van Niekerk.

Planning:

I strived to capture the soul of this one person that I met almost a day or two after we got this project. She had an extreme impact on the way that I see and experience things in life, as well as made me thankful for everything that I have, as well as all of the privelages that I have. 

I thus thought it to be fitting if she became my model for this project. And thus my journey began...

I started off by gathering all of the charecteristics that she has, as you can see here on the picture on the left. 

They followed:

* Depressed

*Thankful

*Tough

*Lonesome
*Greedy

*Wise

*Easilly pleased

*Hard Working

As I jotted down these charecteristics, a brilliant idea for a backround popped into my head. An idea that entailed a lot of work, but would cause my work to be unique, as well as grab the attention of (hopefully) everyone that is around it and sees this piece. These two things are both classified as great priorities and thus I ended up on making this idea. 

The picture on the right, is a page that I just messed upon. I wanted to do this, as I wantedto point out how cruel life is and what disgusting beings there are on the face of the earth. That giant heart in the middle of the page on the right, signifies that the deeds that the people all around me have done, have made me extremely sad and broke my heart into a milion pieces.

Finally, I took some pictures of my model. Yes, she is only 64. I know she does not really look like it, but I saw the birth sertificate with my own eyes. 

The backround balls out from the inside out. the face is thus in the deepest part of the canvas and the sides of this art picture graduately reaches a height or almost half a metre. If I can put it in other words, imagine taking a square shaped bowl, pouring fast-drying paint in there and adding a Netball ball in there. You wait until the paint dries and then you remove the ball. That's how the canvas looks. 

You can see a rough composition sketch on the bottem of the right hand side of this page.

What everything signifies:

The roundness represents the circle of life. The face sort of fades into the backgroung, to create the illusion that the model becomes an object and just a symbol of poverty. The blue represents depression. It graduately fades into black, which symbolises the difficulties and struggles that she goes through. The ellivated edges of this painting, places focus on the hollow face in the middle of the canvas. You thus cannot help but to notice her. If you look at this art piece from any side, you feel cut off from it and this sifgnifies that no one cares for her, that she is all alone in this world and that no-one wants to admit to the struggle that exists in this world. The thus just becomes an object and signifies the poor class in this world.

The final product:

This is how the final product came out.

Observation drawings:

Like you probably have guessed by now, it does not end there. This blog goes on!

Every term we also have to hand in 5 observation drawings. here are the five that I have created last term.

Charcoal drawings