The face is the canvas

The art culture was something that was prominent in Berlin in the 1920's and 30's. One artist that was very involved with the people that were relevant to the time. Otto Dix was a German painter and print maker that based his work in the Weimer movement. His paintings were usually to express the German society at the time. He painted a portrait of Anita Berber not long before she died. This particular painting is a self portrait.from 1913, he has made himself the focal point of the image by using a white background.

http://www.ottodix.org/index/catalog-item/122.001.html

Using this painting we experimented with using the actual face as a canvas. But there was one rule, we couldn't use our fingers. I know a lot of artists that love to use their fingers to create, I am one of them. So this was quite a challenge. In the painting your can see that the colours aren't all blended together, they are layered and textured across the face.

So using our Supracolour palettes and our brushes we got to work trying to re-create this painting on the face. The first problem I face was knowing where to start because you don't want the colour to all blend into each other so you had to build up the colours. For example in the centre of the face I used lots of yellow, green and orange. Whereas there was a lot more darker areas around the edges of the face which got quite messy.

I really enjoyed this experiment as it allowed me to get back to my painting roots. If I were to do it again I would try and mix some colours together to create a better colour match to the painting. I would although work a lot more on layering and texture because I feel that I could have created a more authentic look. Messy but fun!