My series of my drawings placed next to each other in the correct order.
The portraits are pencil, graphite and acrylic on large wooden board.
The first portrait shows a young confident girl smoking a cigarette.
The second portrait shows a teen drinking and being temporarily blinded.
The third and final portrait is seen from a drunken viewers perspective.
This is the final drawing i created for my series of portraits for the World as a Stage project. The idea behind this portrait was to create a strange feeling for the viewer by creating a visual image of what the viewer would see if they were in a drunken or drugged state.
I tried to attempt this by going with a ‘seeing double’ type of feel by merging two heads into one. One of the faces is much more defined than the other, leaving the second and smaller face seeming faded or half missing. This could also be viewed as a movement type of image, where the head has moved and left an imprint of where it once was and now is. This is a difficult visual to understand because the two heads have completely different faces, giving the portrait an overall confusing and trippy vibe. I wanted to give the portrait a determined and sober expression, with intense eye contact, to show that the portrait drawn is not actually the one under the substance in mind, but the viewer is.
The second portrait in my series for our World as a Stage project.
For my series i am focusing on the substance abuse problems we have here in our kiwi youth.
My initial idea for this project was to have a young person swigging a bottle of alcohol but instead i liked the idea of including multiple hands into my second piece. I found an image of two old fashioned women pressing their thumbs into each other eyes and it really struck me as an interesting concept i could include into the portrait. I’ve been to a few parties where people can become ‘hands-on’ after drinking and its a common concept that is recognised in the party atmosphere. It also gives the portrait a slightly trippy feeling of extra hands and not knowing who they belong to. They are also covering the girls eyesight, which is something that could be seen to have a deeper meaning or not. I’d like to leave the viewer to decide what that could mean and maybe ponder about it.
For our current project, we have been given 8 weeks to come up with work to exhibit that must feature either one of two platforms; sustainability or biculturalism. It also had to revolve around how these platforms effect us locally here in New Zealand.
I was really keen to continue working on portraiture which i began in Documenting Visual arts and Design because i really enjoyed it. I decided to focus on the bicultural side and look into how high the rates are of substance abuse in our kiwi youth.
Due to some misunderstanding between myself and my tutors, i wasn’t able to follow through with my original ideas and had to stick with this one. I am not enjoying it as much as i had hoped i would due to lack of passion currently.
I am working on a series for these portraits focusing mainly on alcohol, cigarettes and marijuana which are highly consumed within the youth here in New Zealand. I have three large wooden boards that i have primed and am working on with pencil and paint. This is a photograph of my first completed piece in the series of a young girl smoking a cigarette. I really enjoy playing with disturbing or unusual imagery, and i was interested in the idea of her body not being there but simply her head and hand. I feel it really lets the viewer focus on the issue in the drawing. It also has a very contemporary look about it, which is what i was attempting.
I was asked why i had included the ‘gaze’ (eye contact with the viewer), in my portrait because it was assumed i was focusing on the ‘vulnerability’ of our youth. While i could have focused on that side of drug and alcohol abuse, i decided to go with my gut and really focus on the confidence, rebellion and ‘invincibility’ that teens feel they have today. The gaze really lets the viewer know that this young woman is confident in her choice to smoke cigarettes and doesnt give a damn what anyone else thinks (which is a common outlook on life that many people my age have here in NZ).
For my future portraits i am taking a twist on the drawings and having their meaning a little less literal. I will be focusing on making the viewer feel like they are the ones drunk and they are seeing the portraits through a drugged persons eyes.
Recent drawing. Pencil on moleskine.
Toner, A (2013) ‘Sea Nymph.’
For our last project (and my favorite one to date!) we had our tutor Wellesley Binding take us for studio work where we were to create a ‘manifesto’ that showed a documentation of something we were interested in. I chose to look into the abject of the human condition, which is something that really interests me. I had a small A5 book where i collaged, painted and drew, researched and gathered disturbing information on different human conditions, diseases and issues. It was really fascinating! For many of my pages, i drew some pencil portraits and these are three of my favorites.
amandajtoner 