Who am I ?

Introduction
Art and writing can help people to understand themselves better, because they want to show to other people, who don’t know them, who they are. In this case I’m talking about self-portraits, diaries, letters or autobiographies. You can only show who you are when you know the answer yourself, so you have to find out what you want to show of yourself, and in what kind of way.
The answer on the question ‘Who am I?’ can vary from time to time, even though it’s answered by the same person. It is not always the case, but mostly when you grow up, from a baby to a child, to an adolescent and eventually an adult, your behaviour changes, together with your feelings, thoughts and your view on life. Maybe at a certain point in life you had a hard time, because someone you truly cared about passed away or another sad thing happened, and you felt down, disappointed and miserable. This can also influence the answers on these questions.

Vincent van Gogh
In Van Gogh’s self-portrait from 1888 he is painting, he looks very serious and concentrated. I think he wants to show that he doesn’t just paint for fun, that he takes it serious and wants people to take him serious for who he is and what he does.Looking at his self-portrait from 1889, two ‘manipulated’ versions have been made.
The version of the self-portrait with the muted colours makes it look even more sad and depressed, because there was just some colour in his face, but in the ‘muted version’ this is also dark and greyish. The version of the self-portrait with the brushstrokes smoothed out makes the painting look more calm, there’s less going on, it’s less chaotic.
If you compare the dark-blue and light-blue self-portraits from 1889, I feel that Van Gogh appears calmer in the dark blue self-portrait, because the strokes in the background are ‘just’ straight, while the background of the light blue self-portrait has a lot of waves and circles going on, which makes it seem restless. I think this is because the light blue self-portrait has been made after his recovery, so he had a lot of energy and felt like he had to do something, and he expressed his restlessness in different kinds of figures in the background.
Vincent van Gogh is a typical painter. If you see one of his paintings hanging between other ones, you can easily distinguish which one is a Van Gogh and which one is not. You can easily recognize Van Gogh’s work by his rhythmic patterns of thick brushstrokes and the complimentary colours used in his paintings. For example yellow against purple and blue against orange. Both these techniques make the canvas seem to vibrate, that there goes something on, on that flat piece of canvas.

Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin was a very complicated person. You could only get to know him if you studied his self-portraits and letters. To him, art was very important, it was a kind of outlet to show his feelings and emotions, and everything he had gone through.
From the letters Gauguin had written, you can understand that he tries to tell what he thinks is so important about being an artist, about painting. He clearly states that one’s personality is expressed in the way the painting is made. With just one or two extra brushstrokes here and there you can create a totally different emotion or feeling.
Gauguin’s self-portrait dedicated to Carrière from 1888 or 1889, originally has lots of dark shadows in his face. The dark circles under his eyes make him look very tired and exhausted. The dark parts under his nose, along his jaw line and on his forehead make him look old.
When you clicked on the picture, these shadows disappeared. You then got a total different self-portrait. He looked awake and more happy, like he’s less concerned about the thing he probably was in the painting with the shadows.

Judith Leyster
Judith Leyster is one of the greatest female painters of those times. It was hard to make it in the men’s world being a woman, but she did. She is anything but shy, in the painting she looks straight at you, with a warm glance but still confident. She was also very proud of her own work. Once she said: “I’m a highly skilled, talented and successful painter, and I’m happy and ready to work for you.”All this is true, she was talented and successful, and above that all very skilled, while she wasn’t academically educated.

Conclusion: why do artists make self-portraits?
By making self-portraits, artists discover who they really are, because they want to show that to other people. They have to ask themselves, how do I want to present myself? Must I look happy or sad and what kind of background and what kind of clothes match the emotion I want to get across? Artists make self-portraits to learn more about themselves.

Judith Leyster

Finally is here my Judith Leyster poem. The text isn't that clearly visible so I'll put it right here:

I am Judith Leyster

I am curious and idealistic

I wonder what I'll look like at sixty

I hear the wind blowing

I see the birds flying

I want to be happy

I am Judith Leyster

I pretend birds have no wings

I feel desire

I touch the air

I worry about heaven

I cry about war

I am Judith Leyster

I understand people

I say I believe in God

I dream about colours

I try to help

I hope for you

I am Judith Leyster

All the sentences started with I, and then something she does, like I hope, I feel, etc. I made these in straight and small letters, because those are the things everyone does, everyone feels, hears and understands.

The second part of each sentence is in large, curly letters, because Judith Leyster feels, hears and understands these things.

The colours which surround each second part of the sentence have to do with what it means. For example, the word 'desire' is in pink, 'the air' is in blue, and 'about war' is brown.

On the right of each sentence are some "stripes". I tried to create movement with them, like the sentence just flew into the paper from the right.

I also think if you leave out all the straight letters, at the beginning of each sentence, you also have a nice poem, with a total different message. I didn't do that on purpose, I noticed it after I had finished my poem.

I really like how it turned out, but I can understand people won't like it, or think it's simple. I agree it's simple, but there's a whole meaning and message behind it.

Judith Leyster

I also made a poem, about Judith Leyster.
We got the beginnings of a sentence, and had to fill in the rest, about what she thinks, feels, hears or sees.
I'll insert a picture of my poem with some explenation later this day, because the computer isn't able to upload my picture.

Manonnish

Here you can see the picture I edited for art class. We had to make a selfportrait, and express an emotion with it. I decided to express different emotions or feelings.

I set my camera on a tripod and made pictures of myself expressing different feelings. Then I edited them all together with Adobe Photoshop.

I also made a part of the picture black and white, this is because the emotions which are in black and white are kind of my 'bad' habits.

You may also like to note that the feelings I tried to express are there, attached to my leg, arm, or jacket.

You can't really see it over here, because the picture is fairly small, but from left to right I'm: crazy, innocent, waiting, strange, sad, shy and dreamy.

In the bottom left corner it says: 'Manonnish'. This is how I would describe myself. I'm not like every other person, sometimes I'm happy and outgoing, sometimes sad and shy. The word 'Manonnish' is obviously formed out of my name and '-ish' behind it. It's like 'greenish', kind of green. So 'Manonnish' means, kind of Manon.

My collage

This is my collage. We were supposed to show ourselves by means of pictures and drawings of things you like. You couldn't put a picture of yourself on it, or your name.

I chose dark blue as the background, because it's neither a sad colour, nor a happy one. It is bright, but has some mysterious sides to it, just like myself. I think everyone would be able to recognize me from this collage, eventhough they don't know me very well.

I am quite satisfied with my collage. At first I thought I had way too few pictures, and my collage would be half empty. But luckily this wasn't the case and it came out quite full and busy, just how I wanted it to be.

My self portraits.

Dear Koen,

I am writing this letter to tell you about two painings I have made during art class. They are self-portraits. We were supposed to paint the self-portraits in Van Gogh style, with a lot of brush strokes. We also had to use complimentary colours, colours which are the opposite of each other. They are supposed to tell two different sides of myself. I think you can really see the different emotions in my paintings.

We had about four lessons to paint our two self-portraits. One for the backgrounds, one for the clothes, and two for the faces. For the first two parts I think we had enough time, but to paint the face and the expression you need much more time, because there is supposed to be much more detailing in there. I had put a lot of effort in the first painting, so I quite had to rush the last one.

Anyway, let’s talk about the paintings more detailed.

I’ll start with the one on the left, this is the sad one. It is supposed to express sadness, desperateness and loneliness. I am crying on there, I have dark circles under my eyes, and my skin looks a lot more matt and pale. The background draws me back, because the orange stripes closer to my head are larger than the ones which are closer to the edge of the paper, there is also more space in between them.
The painting on the right is supposed to be the happy one. The colours are brighter, my eyes are open and I am laughing. It is supposed to express happiness and joy. But I don’t think I really succeeded that, because my eyes look empty, they don’t speak as in the sad painting. Also my laugh looks very unreal. I now see why, but I’ll talk about that later. The background brings me forward, because the stripes are closer to each other and they are also thicker when they are closer to my head. This is something which did succeed in this painting.

I now see a lot of things which I could have done better. My neck is very long in both paintings, and the shadow in the neck is also on the wrong side, because the shadow on the nose is on the right, the shadow in the neck can never be on the left. Except for this I like my sad painting.

In my happy painting my eyes look empty, because there is no shadow behind them. It looks like they are on top of my face, while they are part of it. My laugh looks fake, because there are no laugh lines. I knew there was something wrong with the mouth, but I couldn’t find out what it was, but now I know.
That’s also why I’m not fully satisfied with my paintings, because I know what to improve on them. I do like the sad one, like I have said several times before. And I think, if I had had more time to paint the happy one, it would have looked a lot better.It is also quite a problem that I know beforehand how I want to look my paintings. An idealistic view. But this never comes out, so I am not satisfied easily.

I hope you’ll write back soon, and tell me about what you have done in the several years I haven’t seen you.

Your friend,

Manon.

Canterbury!

At 5 March 2010, T2a visited Canterbury. There, we went to see the cathedral of Canterbury.
It was much bigger as I expected. And I think it was very beautiful.
It is not really my taste like how it looks at first sight, but when I saw the very detailed statues and decorations I felt like: wow! That is amazing. You have to imagine, how people have made this! That should be a huge work...
The outside was nicer than the inside, because inside the romanesque and gothic style were mixed. That was something I disliked.
The tour inside the cathedral was very boring. It was nice to see a lot, but I really do not have to know everything what happened at that place and listen ten minutes to an explanation about that.
But I had a great day in Canterbury.