IB Art Portfolio Work

I went to a high school that participated in the International Baccalaureate Program (IBP). Out of the classes I took, IB Art was a chance for me to explore different media, styles, and engage in new ways of visual thinking.

Over the course of two years, I completed artwork critique, artist investigations, planning, experimentation, and completed a portfolio of 14 works centered around the theme of Beauty. Below are some of them:

DRAWING

One of my favorite pieces that I made was a simple ink drawing of a girl cutting her hair. I usually sketch first, and meticulously plan out my work before I do something as permanent to it as outline it in marker or paint. But for this one, I wanted to introduced more spontaneity in my work by allowing myself to only work with ink and marker. Doodling has always been incredibly therapeutic to me, and so doodling something with such permanence was a different way to look at something that was more or less a habit to me. Conceptually, I hoped to comment on the destruction of natural beauty in the face of ubiquitous beauty standards for women.

Planning and documentation.

Permanent marker and ink pen on cardstock.

PAINTING

Research, process, and planning.

Anemone, acrylic on canvas, 25'' x 32''

Through the process of discovering new artists and art movements, I fell in love with the tragic Romanticism of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. I quickly found a favorite in the delicate, detail-intensive, naturalistic, yet poignant symbolism of John William Waterhouse's works.

An analysis of his Ophelia (1889) sparked the foundations of one of my portfolio pieces.

Ophelia (1889) four-frame artwork analysis.

Planning, processes, and reflection page for my painting.

Ophelia, acrylic on canvas, 28'' x 36''

"The Banquet", below, was one of the two large scale pieces in my portfolio. I combined a love a luxury fashion with the concept of the Seven Deadly Sins to express the vanity of beauty by juxtaposing physical beauty with interior ugliness. I tried to pay homage to the theme of Vanitas and the richly decadent style of Baroque art by trying to emulate dramatic Baroque lighting and using rich colors.

Planning pages and initial sketches.

"The Banquet", final work, acrylic on wood board, 70'' x 45''.

WATERCOLOR:

Again inspired by a love of couture and all things fashion (and umbrellas). This piece was inspired by fashion photography and through the process I developed a better understanding of using watercolors.

Planning and experiment pages.

Watercolor on watercolor paper. 26'' x 18''

MULTIMEDIA

For the next piece, also inspired by fashion photography and the opulent, I underwent a onerous process of cutting out 200+ pieces jewelry from fashion magazines including Bazaar Jewelry and Vogue to express themes of excess and glittery decadence. I also used lipstick and nail polish to reinforce the idea of vanity with prototypical examples of makeup as my medium.

Planning and reflection page.

Pencil, marker, nail polish, lipstick, and magazine clippings.

This was a piece inspired by my artist research on Ran Hwang and Gustav Klimt (notably of his work, The Kiss), as well as inspiration from Donald Lipski's Starry Night, in which he recreated Van Gogh's famous wave-like strokes with razor blades mounted onto a white wall. I used Canadian model Jessica Stam as my reference, and I used gold thumbtacks to create a semblance of a studded dress associated with fashion houses like Balmain and Dolce & Gabbana. I tried to experience Ran Hwang's meditative process, while keeping the pins of the thumbtacks exposed to express the hostile underbelly of vanity.

I chose foam board for ease of sticking pins in, but soon realized that gold paint refused to stick to it, and gold spray-paint would corrode the foam. And so, I stuck on small pieces of masking tape and colored over.

Planning, experimentation, and process page.

Playing with a wide range of media, including acrylic, masking tape, oil-based marker, and thumb tacks.

Mirror Mirror was an exciting piece for me to do. Long story short, I smashed 20kg of mirrors and mounted them onto a 9-foot tall wooden board. I even invited my class to come destress by smashing mirrors with me. We are still recovering from a million years of bad luck. I then played IRL Tetris with the mirror shards.

FASHION

I’ve loved fashion since I was 7 and sketched to the point where my desk was constantly covered in designs, but never took those ideas beyond sketches. For my IB Art Portfolio, I decided I had to make dresses! I sketched, patterned, tinkered with a sewing machine, and pieced fabric together then took it apart again and again. The finished products didn’t quite meet my ideal, but the process, mistakes, and final feeling of taking an abstract idea and turning into something tangible is something I constantly recall to motivate myself.

The first piece was a feathered tulle mermaid gown deeply inspired by the tragic romanticism of the late Alexander McQueen.