Mechanical Portrait
The project I chose to do my final on was the self portrait. We were given a choice to make a mechanical, zombie or expressive twist on our piece. At first I sketched zombie faces with exposed brains and teeth biting into arms. Lots of blood and Gore. But then I decided that mechanical might be more fun, so I just started brainstorming words that came to mind when I think of the phrase "mechanical". I thought of words like gears, electricity, antennae, and robotic. I drew up some quick sketches and decided that I would make my portrait mechanical. Then I went on the internet and grabbed some references for my first sketches. I wanted to do a jaw powered by gears, so I needed to find a picture of teeth.
This was my original sketch. I liked the way the gears and jaw looked, but the rest didn't interest me. It needed more. I played with the idea of a tongue or an antenna. I scrapped the tongue idea but the antenna would come back later.
I began to play with the idea of a full helmet, inspired by a Spartan warrior. I incorperated a protective blade over the gears to give it a warrior look. I added some vents on the bottom jaw to make it look more like a piece of metal. At this point I was pretty happy with the way the drawing looked, but it wasn't perfect yet. My mind wandered back to the zombie ideas. I decided that I wanted my drawing to be as unique and colorful as possible, so I thought, "what if I use the exposed brains idea. The lack of lips and exposed teeth already made the drawing look pretty gruesome, but I wanted to take it a step further.
Here is the final piece, done in nupastel. The brain idea fit in very nicely through a glass dome on top of the helmet. The brain matter was one of the most fun parts of the drawing to do. The ridge on top of the helmet stayed from the previous drawing, but evolved from it. I moved the antennae to the top in a Mohawk shape and added electricity to give the portrait a steampunk-spartan look. The end concept of this piece is a mind control helmet. The jaw helps control what the wearer says, and the electric antennae receive signals to control the mind. This is emphasized by the exposed brain. Next to the brain window is a gauge that shows the status of the wearer. Green means completely submissive and under the influence of the controller, and red means that the wearer's mind is breaking free. This piece was my choice for the final because the design process was fun, the colors are bright, and the portrait has an interesting concept behind it. I thought outside the box and incorperated zombie and mechanical ideas, as well as science fiction and ancient warriors.