"Or.. not."
said the curator and the students started to laugh nervously. The same happened when he said that he would give us knives when we were done.
"I meant, you'll have to accurately cut away all the unused space!"
During the workshop week we were required to work in the studios at least 7 hours a day, however, the doors were opened from 8 am till 10 pm. We weren't allowed to bring our works home or take a day off. And we must work in acrylic paint. The deadline was on Friday 12am. So, at the end we had to show the curators our at-least-30-hours-of-work self-portraits, and the least important requirement was... alikeness. So, the whole thing had actually nothing to do with drawing a self-portrait after all. Instead, we were tested on how well we can scale/grid a picture and mix colors:
Students had to scale a small photographic source to a larger format (aprox 90x120cm) using a specific 88-square grid to create a minimum of 352 spaces. Each required a minimum of two colours; at least 704 colour mixes overall.
It's funny how the text in the invitation said "the paintings of the Fauves were referenced". However, we still couldn't really work in fine fauvism, because as long as the grid wasn't clearly seen it meant that you would fail. Instead, they showed us an hour-long presentation which consisted exclusively of Chuck Close's works + the works of students from previous years. I didn't like this Chuck Close and it made me quite upset that he had to be our major source of inspiration. I still hoped that I could do whatever I want as long as it was up to all the colour mixing requirements. Then, the two of the curators showed up and started asking me not to forget about the grid, while I was working on my beanie in fine pointillism, the father of the fauvism! *Nope. Grid it.* And did I grid it. When the work was almost finished I drew a thin black almost invisible grid over it.
"It's look.. weird now. What do you want to do with it next?"
"Err.. Nothing? Should I do something else?"
"... Well, technically it's a grid, so.. I think, you are fine."
"Yay, thank you!"
A little victory :) Because I liked what I was doing, and I saw that other people liked it too, students were coming to me telling nice things several times a day everyday (they still come!) which meant (means) a lot to me, really a lot.
Oh, I remembered a story (sorry!^_^): I was drawing in the same room with these two ~yo fuck man~ guys who never used headphones while listening to their ~music~ at school. But this time, they turned it SO loud, I couldn't stay in the room any longer. So, I just went out and sat on the floor to calm down and read a book for a while. And a teacher, v cute and V energetic woman, saw me and got worried. The boys turned the music off (without feeling uncomfortable to turn it on again the next day though), and I returned to the studio (I didn't ask the lady anything, it's just one of those boys was accidentally passing by while i was explaining to her why I'm not in the studio drawing).
Later, she came to me, asked if everything was alright, complimented my work, asked where I was from/where I studied before etc, and then she introduced me to the whole studio and even jokingly asked a girl if she said "hi" to me that day. Ha haa killmethatwassoemberrassing. But she is such a lovely lady!
When we came to the exhibition we saw my self-portrait hanging among the selected works! ^__^ Ahh, I love my/not-even-my teachers and [some of the] students from my college so much I want to lie down on its floor in a star position pretending I'm hugging it.
P.S. Here are my favorite portraits from the selected works + mine in the end:
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