According to Wiki,
A starving artist is an artist who sacrifices material well-being in order to focus on their artwork. They typically live on minimum expenses, either for a lack of business or because all their disposable income goes toward art projects.
As I do my very best to be brutally honest, including with myself, I can say that I am most definitely a Starving Artist 😂. Or, perhaps even worse because I don't think I've ever had disposable income in my entire life😂.
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| The Starving Artist |
Always wanting to use as many different fun and unique mediums at the same time, I tried to incorporate as many things in this without going overboard (which I tend to do 😂 ). Starting with the background, I used a sheet of 22X28 poster board that I spray painted with a matt black acrylic paint then, while it was still wet, spritzed the whole sheet with alcohol in a spray bottle. This texture technique is really fun and tends to inspire more than a few ideas for future projects (which tends to be a problem, as I have TOO MANY ideas 😂).
For my "artist crown," I actually based the idea off of a hat I really do own and wear when I'm working! It doesn't have the pens and brushes, usually, attached to it, but I do use it as a painters/clean up rag ALOT so the textures and paint splotches are true to form. For the shape of the cap I drew and hand cut a large stencil out of poster board and painted a light green basecoat using acrylic spray paint by Liquitex. Once that basecoat was completely dry I sprayed a darker green overtop of the lighter green and, while it was still wet, laid a sheet of plastic wrap over top and crinkled it in random directions so that I could achieve a sort of fabric, wrinkly textured look similar to what the cap has in reality.
Once that all completely dried I added the paint splotches, directly from the tube, in as close to the same areas and colors that are actually on the cap. To help get a more realistic look I had in mind for the face and hand, I used some crushed graphite powder and a makeup brush to add some shadowing around the folds where they showed on the reference photo I took of me wearing the prop hat. And, no, you cannot see that because I can't be held responsible for your sudden blindness 😂. The finishing touch for the cap was to outline the hat and the folds with light and dark green Posca Paint markers.
For the pens, brushes, etc., I made multiple stencils and cut them out by hand based on the real tools that I had tapped to the back of the cap. Using acrylic craft paints by FolkArt, I wanted to use vibrant and playful rainbow colors for many reasons. One, of course, because art is always vibrant and colorful, even when it's designed to be muted andor monotone. Even the sketches done by the great, legendary, Alfred Hitchcock are vibrant and expressive, even though he only used charcoal. So, I wanted to make reference to that a little. Another homage, you could say, I wanted to reference was to the LGBT rainbow flag. This was more of a in passing thought, not really specific to the design, but, as this was a self portrait, I felt that the more "Easter eggs" concerning who/what I am would make the overall piece more interesting. And it's TOTALLY not because I wanted to use up my craft paints and the stencils made the tools look like a little kid made them at summer camp. Nope. No way. 😂
I honestly dragged my feet as much as I could with this piece simply because I dreaded working on the face. Because it's not just ANY face, it's MY face that I had to spend hours and hours staring at and I just am not a fan of that. 😂 But I did enjoy making the mock ups, getting my real face dirty and posing for the camera so I could get a decent angle that matched the image in my head. I wanted to not only portray a dirty, hungry, homeless man but also try and give form to the literal image of a true starving artist. Starving doesn't always mean starving for food, but can also mean you're starving for attention, recognition, connection, and, of course, MONEY! 😂 So, that was also a big factor that inspired this piece.
To get the right shape and alignment for the head and hand, I had traced the shapes on two sheets of poster board and made separate stencils for both. I had considered (too late) using the cut out portions of the stencils to cover the poster board before spray painting the background, but, yea. Hindsight. So, instead I used the stencils to cover the background (and cap) and spray painted a base white coat for the hand and face. I had the idea of directing the focus to the two still life objects, the crown and the penny, first and the body sort of just meld into the background. Sort of like a symbolic image of how the starving artist feels within our society/culture, where the art is seen because of its vibrant intrigue and the money (whether buying the materials to make the art or the art itself) is seen for its multifaceted value.