For the Show of Hands exhibition, we had to create a project that somehow portrayed the idea of hands, either as a tool or as the subject. In my work, I chose to create a portrait of the famous Brazilian architect, Oscar Niemeyer through my fingerprints. The reason why I chose this certain image of Niemeyer was mainly because his hands are also visible in the portrait. Oscar Niemeyer is relevant to me and I chose to use him as the subject for my work because I find that the work he completed throughout his lifetime is what most inspired me to want to pursue architecture in the future. For this project, since I wanted to use my fingerprints as my mark-makers, I had to use the ink pad specifically used for documenting fingerprints. Although I had the option to match the colors of the original portrait to my work, I chose to keep it monochromatic since it is the style that I chose for myself as an artist.
Since the original portrait had the lighting coming in from a certain angle, that caused Niemeyer's face to have many shaded and lighter points, I had to find a way to be able to create the different shades. It was challenging because the only way that I would be able to create the shaded and lighter points was by applying different pressures to get less or more ink. It may not have been exactly the same, but I was able to apply different pressures and create patterns for the shaded and lighter parts of the face. |