Design Principles: Project 1

28.9.2021 - 12.10.2021 (Week 6 - Week 8)
Chung Yi Ki / 0345014 / BDCM
Design Principles
Project 1

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Main Menu

1. Lecture
2. Tasks
3. Reflection 

Sub-Menu (Tasks)

1. Instructions 

2. Visual research

3. Idea exploration 

4. Feedback

5. Final outcome

Lecture

Week 6 / Self-portrait

For this week’s lecture, we are introduced to self-portraiture and some directions on how to create one of ourselves. 

Self-portrait 

• A visual depiction of the artist/designer. It can be either a drawing, painting, sculpture, or generally a design. 
• It represents how the artist/designer sees himself or how they want to be seen by others.  

A self-portrait doesn’t have to be realistic, and it doesn’t have to show our face either. It is an exercise on self-exploration so, as long as it expresses how we see ourselves, then the aim is achieved. 

Fig 1.1 Guide on reflecting on ourselves
Source: Lecture recording

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Tasks

Instructions

Project 1

For this project, we are tasked to create a self-portrait of ourselves based on how we define ourselves, or how we want others to see us. We are allowed to use any medium and will have to apply various design principles in our self-portrait. 

Visual research

Proust Questionnaire 

Fig 1.1 Proust Questionnaire
Source: https://personal-development-zone.com/proust-questionnaire/

Before I start my visual research on the portraiture style I wanted to reference, I took Dr. Charles suggestion of reading the Proust Questionnaire to help guide us on what characteristics that we want to express in our self-portrait. There are 35 questions in total and after answering all of them, I decided to focus on question 25 and 27 to figure out what I want to express in my self-portrait. 

25. What is your most marked characteristic?

I was often told that I’m kind in helping people, sometimes too kind for my own good. This led me to reflect that my helpful characteristic always made me to be a “backstage” person. I would always prefer to be in the background rather than being the one who has to stand in front of a crowd. 

27. Who are your favourite writers?

John Green. But the books he writes are not my go-to genre. The novel genre that I would always consider first is fantasy, especially stories where talking creatures (dragons or animals) are the main characters. But whenever I want to read young adult novels, John Green is on the top of my list and his writing is the best among the books I’ve read, irrespective of genres. 

After considering these 2 questions, I decided to make my answer for question 27 an extra addition in my self-portrait if applicable and question 25 as my main focus. So, being a “backstage” person, I don’t like to be in focus of anything and making a self-portrait means I have to be the focus of the work. So as I thought of how to work around this and make it as candid as possible, I was reminded of portrait captured through reflections. 

Mirror reflection self-portrait

Fig 2.1 Vivian Maier, “Anaheim, California, September 10” (1995)
Source: https://hyperallergic.com/99620/self-portraits-in-a-complex-mirror-the-photographs-of-vivian-maier/

I find this self-portrait of Vivian Maier really interesting to look at. The photo suggests that she’s holding a mirror while shooting at a larger mirror. She doesn’t look at the lens but rather at the side which gives a candid feeling to the picture. Her surrounding is dark and the light is clearly focused on her face. It doesn’t only create a focal point but also adds an air of mystery to her portraiture. As if telling the audience they have to get closer to her to truly know her. 

Fig 2.2 David Hockney "Self Portrait, Karlsbad 1970"
Source: https://www.creativeboom.com/inspiration/happy-birthday-david-hockney/

In this self-portrait, it seems that David Hockney is showing his personality through his fashion sense. The way he didn’t strike any pose and stand in a casual manner, while taking the picture showing the wall, mirror frame and the reflection of the things around the room creates an intimate atmosphere to the portraiture. It’s like letting the audience see him through his own eyes. 

Fig 2.3 Ziqian Liu self-portrait from "Reflection 2" (2020)
Source: https://mymodernmet.com/ziqian-liu-reflection-2/

In Ziqian Liu’s self-portrait, she uses a surrealism direction and doesn’t show her face like how most self-portrait would. She only shows herself in the mirror while the objects outside the mirror integrates seamlessly to her reflection in the mirror. The use of flowers seems to represent part of her personality and the photograph gives a feeling of hoping for an ideal desire.

Idea exploration

Sketches

After doing some visual research, I decided to use photography as my medium to create my self-portrait. To me, drawing myself in any way or form doesn’t feel genuine as I would end up wanting to make the outcome perfect and that feels like a false representation. Photographing is the most truthful depiction of anything because it’s capturing what’s already there. I didn’t want to directly photograph myself either because I’m a person who’s always behind the camera. So I thought to myself what would someone like me do if they were asked to stand in the spotlight? And that’s where I got the idea of using a “dummy” that would substitute me in my place. 

Fig 3.1 Sketches

The “dummy” is basically how I present myself to others. Someone who wear glasses, uses this specific phone and is always wearing a casual attire. It’s a way of me poking fun at the audience in showing a self-portrait (because they would expect to see me clearly but instead they get a dummy). The photo is taken through a mirror reflection to give a sense that the photo is viewed from my perspective. And the real me would either be a blur in the background or not show up in the picture at all, as if to say “you’ll know me better away from the camera”. Sketch number 4 doesn’t show the dummy but only blurred me and some props to represent my interest, but I decided to stick to the dummy idea because I think it’s more fun and suitable.     

Test shots

Fig 4.1 Test shot #1 (from sketch number 1)

Fig 4.2 Test shot #2 (from sketch number 3 with some changes)

I did some test shots of sketch number 1 and 3 in Fig 3.1 to try out the concept. In test shot #1, everything except me (who is in motion blur) is in black and white to show that the dummy and the space it is in are what you see in plain sight, you’d have to catch the moving person to know the true colours. 

In test shot #2, there’s only the dummy to represent me and the books at the side are to show my interest. Fantasy books with talking dragons like the “The Erth Dragons” and “Wings of Fire” will have me sold in a second because they always take me to another world, but sometimes I’ll feel the need to be grounded in reality and there’s where young adult novels come along like “The Fault in Our Stars”. The mirror frame being visible gives a feeling that the audience is seeing the photo from my perspective. 

Further development of test shot #1

After receiving feedback from Dr. Charles, I decided to make some changes to test shot #1 because the idea behind it is better. I took some more pictures with the same idea in mind, but this time with proper camera settings. I changed to using manual mode and took the pictures in 1/8 shutter speed to capture the motion blur of me moving in the background. After that, I reviewed the pictures I took and came down to 4 choices that matches the concept that I’m going for. 

Fig 5.2 Shortlisted 4 photographs (original)

Fig 5.1 Shortlisted 4 photographs (edited)

Between the 4 photographs, shot #1 has a good composition but it puts too much emphasis on me, causing the dummy to be shadowed over too much since it’s supposed to be part of the subject in the self-portrait too. In shot #2, the motion blur has more dynamism but I wanted a sense of nonchalance in my movement to create a mysterious feeling to it. So, between shot #3 and shot #4, I choose shot #4 as I wanted to keep the mirror frame visible. But something still feels off and that's when it hit me the composition might be too closed up, so I tried positioning the dummy further away from the mirror to get a wider shot. 

Fig 5.2 Wider reshot (original)

Fig 5.3 Wider reshot (edited)

The dummy can be seen in full now and there's more white space to give the photograph room to breathe. The elements are not too cramped up so there's enough space for both me and the dummy to get sufficient focus. By having the dummy's tripod leg in frame it's able to give a more sense of distance between me and the dummy. I also used my current glasses that I'm wearing for this reshot rather than my old glasses in the previous photos to give an accurate representation for dummy me. 

The black and white part of the picture is edited to have high contrast so that the value between the black and white colours have a stronger contrast to them. The vibrance of the colour motion blur is increased to bring focus to it but the saturation is also decreased so it won't overshadow the black and white dummy.

Fig 5.4 Final edited photograph of self-portrait

I later increased the motion blur a bit in Photoshop to add more movement to it but also making sure it's not too blurry. I also removed a visible part of my heel and a spot on the mirror so there's no distraction in the final photograph. 

Feedback

Week 7

Dr. Charles said that I seem to got the concept covered but I can ask myself more questions regarding on how I want to apply it in my self-portrait to understand the concept better. Test shot #1 (Fig 4.1) has a strong controversial sense to it where it provokes the viewer. It's on the right track and make sure to write the rationale clearly. 

Final outcome

Fig 6.1 Final self-portrait outcome - JPEG

Fig 6.2 Final self-portrait outcome - PDF

There are two subjects in my self-portrait, the real me and the dummy me. The dummy me is basically to represent how I present myself to others, nothing more than someone who uses this particular phone and always have it on her, wears glasses and is always wearing casual clothes. But the dummy, along with the mirror and background, is in black and white to symbolize that these are just what you see in plain sight. The real me, however, is in colour and in motion blur to show that whoever is viewing this self-portrait have to keep up and “catch” me to learn about my true self, or in other words, my true colours. My position being close to the mirror frame is to emphasize that I’m moving out of frame. The mirror frame is left visible in the composition so that it gives the self-portrait a feeling of intimacy that the viewers are seeing my reflection through “my own eyes”. 

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Reflection

Through this project, I was able to learn more about myself and figure out a way to express what I think is my most authentic self. The Proust Questionnaire was a good guideline in helping me to map out my characteristics and decide on which I want to touch on for my self-portrait. The previous exercise done on the different design principles helped me understand on how to apply them on my self-portrait too. While I’ve chosen a photography route in this project unlike most of my previous exercises, I found that photography is a different but fun way to experiment with the design principles. A lot of interesting results can be achieved when playing around with the camera settings.