Creating a Positive Self-Portrait

Now it's time for you to create your own self-portrait. Remember it doesn’t have to look like you look. Think of it as your other self, your past self, your future self, your child self, your creative self, your best self

Collage Step by Step Summary: 

1. Decide your colour palette. For a harmonious restful self-portrait choose colours next to each other on the colour wheel (red.orange, yellow or blue, purple, red). For a dynamic energetic self-portrait choose colours across from each other like green and red, or orange and blue. Here's a colour wheel so you can see your options:

2. Stencil the outside edges of your page in your colours. Here's one my backgrounds scraped with Cadmium Yellow and then with stencilling added. 

3. Cut out words, images and rectangles to go with your colours. You’ll probably only use 30% of what you cut out, so cut out lots! For this self-portrait, I wanted to stay in the harmonious  yellow-green-brown colour scheme.

4. Build a border on your page, starting with larger squares and rectangles in the corner, and filling in as you go. Remember to leave some of the stenciling visible, and think about balancing light and dark, and texture and pattern as you glue things down. You may want to “audition” pieces before you glue them down for good (I do!). 

5. Add your head using the template below. Cut it out of patterned paper or a large magazine image. You'll see my head and neck and different colours ~ I wanted it to look like a high collar. Place your head as a focal point on your page, leaving room to add words later. I find it makes more sense if the neck goes off the edge of the page so it's not floating loose. But you could make yourself a balloon if it feels right to you. 

6. Cut out pairs of eyes, mouths, and textures that could be hair from fashion magazines. Here are some eyes and mouths I cut out for one of my collages. It's good to move them around till you find a face that feels right to you. Keep the face template handy to help place your facial features in logical places. Remember that eyes are at the halfway mark, and the mouth is at the quarter line. This will make sure you have room for hair later. You can also transfer the features from the template onto your cut out head using either a piece of carbon paper (if you have it) or by colouring the back of the features on the template with soft pencil and then tracing them from the front.

Auditioning some eyes and mouths.

My final choices.

7. Continue adding to your collage using more border pieces, and words that surround you with positivity. You can use either the phrases from the exercise from the last post, or think of positive words people have attributed to you. Think of qualities you have that have helped you through your life or ways you make the lives of those around you better, for instance. If you're still stuck, here's a list of positive words that you can either write out or pint out to use:

8. Once you have everything in place, continue uniting things by adding small details like outlining in black, or tiny text, or unifying hints of colour until you feel your portrait is done. Below is my finished positive self-portrait. 

Here are a few more positive self-portraits I've made teaching this class using paint, stenciling and collage. You’ll probably recognize the backgrounds as those we made in class with basket-weave text squares and gesso, as well as the paint scraping method. Working on a page in your journal (or two facing pages), start by creating the background of your choice. 

Succulent Self ~ It's not important that your self-portrait actually LOOK like you. Well, not your outer self anyway. This one looks nothing like me. Colour-wise, I decided to take advantage of the fact that the background was a mix of yellow, pink, orange, blue and purple to add lots of colour to this. Some images were chosen simply for their colour (I wanted it to be visually stimulating) others were chosen for their text or other meanings. Some of the text reads: "Look ahead in a new direction", and "Live inspired". Just to the top left of the head is a little shape that looks like a pair of eyes to me. The main words in the center are those other people have used to describe me to myself. It's useful I find to claim good qualities others use for us, even if we'd normally shy away from them.

Succulent Self

Firecracker Self ~ For this self-portrait, I deliberately chose colours that were vibrant and out of my comfort zone. The background started off SO calm with only blues and purples, so I was worried I was going down a calm path and I wanted something different. Here's the before and after to show you what I mean:

Lovely, but maybe will be a bit boring?

Not so boring anymore!

This one, again, looks nothing like me. The hair is made by red wine splashing out of a glass, which is totally not me ... lol. And I managed to sneak in my initial again, which I do to lay further claim to the qualities and positivity I'm including. These phrases come from the exercise in the last post as well.

Curious Girl ~ This is the newest self-portrait that I completed in the classes in November. The background was the scribbled text background we talked about in our backgrounds class. I set the colour scheme using both washi tape on the top and bottom of the page, as well as scraping paint (lemon yellow and iridescent orange) and adding green, pink and black with water-soluble crayons. I thought instead of doing my usual hair I would give her a hat and I found a wonderful basket of pysanky eggs in a magazine. Since the hat and the background were so vivid, I gave her simple straight black hair with felt pen and black crayon.

You'll notice the eyes and the mouth are not in proportion to each other. To me, this is like a child's face - showing me as a person who comes to new experiences with innocence and curiosity, as a child would. The eyes extend beyond the sides of the face, which is like a pair of glasses and rings true to me. I've labeled myself as "Curious", and the eggs in the hat I've labeled: Inclusive, Kind, Caring, Alert and Brave. These are qualities I aspire to live up to every day, even if I don't exhibit them all the time. They are literally "in my head" and "on my mind" in this portrait.

I encourage you to create your own self-portrait, whether it be a past self, present self, future self, child self, perfect self, imperfect self, healing self, nature self or any kind of self you'd like to explore. I'd love to see what you come up with!