This is my first post in Term two after the holidays. This post includes a list of my goals for the spring term and also my first work: Recreating an Artwork Challenge.
My learning goals
During the break, I analysed the skills I got in Term one and also thought about what I would like to improve and what goals I want to achieve in Term two. The first of them I mentioned in the previous posts. It is learning a new program Revit, as I think it will help me make my projects more organised and notice the details that I may miss. My second goal is to do a deeper analysis of information and my actions during my studies. I think it will help me make more progress. Looking at my previous project, I realised that the final illustrations do not look like I imagined this project. Therefore, my next goal is to learn how to present my work as I would like to see it and develop my own style of illustrations in the future. This will help me to convey my ideas more accurately. This term I plan to try to make illustrations using my drawing skills. I plan to work in Procreate or in a new program for me, which I learned recently and which I really liked. It is Feather 3D. I also want to use Photoshop to make the illustrations a little more realistic. Below I presented images that inspire me.
Recreating an Artwork Challenge
Final outcome and research into the work of the artist
The painting I chose for recreating is the work of Belgian artist Rene Magritte in the style of surrealism. This painting was painted in 1937 in oil on canvas. It shows a man in a business suit who probably works in the office. There are mountains and clear sky on the background. His face is calm and with a slight smile. This picture evokes positive emotions. It doesn't look realistic because the head looks similar to orange ball and it is separated from the body. This picture is more like a concept. I'm not sure why the ball is orange if it is a head. Maybe the artist just uses simple colours to focus on the idea or he chose a contrasting colour to the blue mountains. The name of this painting is The Pleasure Principle. The head in the form of a big ball reminds me a person who is very overloaded with his own thoughts. But considering that his face is calm and joyful, I think his thoughts are positive. The head that is separate from the body reminds me a person who is very deep in his thoughts. I think in this painting the artist showed how the person feels the pleasure. Probably he is so happy that he forgot about his physical body and feels only emotions.
Three facts about the work:
1. The painting was drawn in surrealism style.
2. This is a portrait but the human here was shown as an idea.
3. The head separately of the body shows two human words: internal and external.
Plan and the first sketch
To recreated the big orange balloon from the painting, I decided to use a mandarin because it fits perfectly in colour and shape. I planned to draw a face on the mandarin with a pen and take a picture of it closer to the camera to make the mandarin look bigger, like in the artist's painting. But I couldn't do it because the camera could focus only on the foreground (mandarin) or on the background (suit, etc.) and one of them was blurred. Therefore I decided to take a picture of the mandarin separately and then just put it on the main photo. To show the mountains, I decided to use blue bags. I also decided to ask my partner to take on a suit, white shirt and red tie and hide her face with a blue bag. But in the end, I thought that I could use a clothes hanger for this and maybe I could get the same result.
Process
My partner took on a suit, a shirt and a tie. She also hid her hair and sat close to the wall so I could make a background.
Then I attached the bags to the wall with a transparent tape around she to show the mountains.
After that, I covered her face with a bag and tucked the bag under the shirt to hide her neck. I took a photo using the camera in the OldRoll app to make the photo effect a little more similar to the picture.
After that, I drew a face on the mandarin with a pen, attached the tape to it and photographed it separately holding the tape.
Then I used Procreate app to remove the background on the photo with a mandarin and add a mandarin to the main photo. I also removed the highlights.
At the end, I edited the colour of the photo so that it looked similar to picture’s colours.
References for images and text
2. Unknown (n. d.) ‘Illustrating an Architectural Section in Photoshop file - PSD with all layers used’, Gumroad. Available at: https://arqui9.gumroad.com/l/zUxPE (Accessed: 17 January 2026)
Add click through links for your reference images, please to evidence where you found them.
ReplyDeleteRene Magritte was Belgian. Please add three facts about this work.