Chef Portraits

Our first 'official' assignment for our class was to produce 20 portraits of a past chef, which we chose from a list of 9. We had to use both conventional & unconventional methods to create these portraits, and also had to consider incorporating symbolic aspects into our pieces, which reflected a certain part of their life.

After doing some initial research of the chefs, I decided on Elizabeth David. I think what particularly drew me to her, was her interesting life which was full of traveling and adventures. I thought that her life travels was one aspect that I could focus on representing in one, or many of my portraits.

As we had to produce so many portraits, I decided to get stuck right in, I didn't want to experiment much before hand, as I felt like experimental nature of my portraits would enable me to have some more successful than others - which is all part of the learning process. I began by creating portraits using conventional materials such as, pencil/graphite, biro & ink, but then decided that it would be important to 'think outside the box'.

I began experimenting with the food that David commonly worked with, e.g flour (for bread making), pasta, spices and lentils. These food combinations enabled me to create some very unusual portraits that were relatively successful!

Below are some of my portraits that were completed for the task:

 Pencil, pen & wash, chalk & colouring pencil, continuous line using biro.

 Watercolour & masking fluid, black colouring pencil & collage, pen & ink, 3D effect on photoshop.

 Pasta, lentils & spices, machine stitching, brio drawing on her book cover & glass chillies, miniature acrylic stamp painting.

Stencil paper cut on top of one of her recipes, flour on granite, biro on her first book, toast image (using stencil under the grill)

My favourite portrait that I created was this one: 

The reason for this is because I feel like it holds a lot of symbolism, as it shows Davids's travels from London, Paris, Italy & Egypt. Also by complete coincidence, the stitching has created an outline of a chilli which is very fitting!

Peer Assessment

I received some feedback from my peers which was overall very positive & helpful. Some had commented on the fact that I had used just the one image of Elizabeth, which many found to be effective when the portraits were displayed together. I agree with this, as because one of the key focuses for this project was to experiment with different materials, I felt that the outcomes of these would be easily comparable if they were all of the same image. This way you can effortlessly see which materials enabled me to recreate the image in an effective way, and others that perhaps didn't. 

Others also commended me on my wide range of experimentation, and many picked out my toast portrait as my 'most successful piece'. 

The only piece of advice I received, was to gather more source material - which I agree with!

Self Assessment

I feel like I responded to the task well, & creates a good balance of portraits made from conventional & unconventional materials. I also stepped outside of my comfort zone to experiment with unusual materials, & even creates some really successful portraits from it! I have found some really effective techniques and approaches that I may end up using again in future projects. 

I will continue t explore different materials and the unique outcomes they create. I also have learnt to document my process more in my sketchbook to give my work more context. This is an area of my practise that I need to work on.