What’s in a self portrait?

So I obviously take a lot of self portraits! I’m actually not a fan of having my photo taken by other people, I’m a bit awkward. It’s much easier to take my own I find them therapeutic. I like the planning, I keep a diary of my thoughts and feelings so a self portrait is often just me working through something. They are not all artsy and brooding sometimes I will take something randomly just for fun!

I’ve started doing self portraits more seriously over lockdown because well I've have more time to spend with myself, and they are a great way to improve editing and learn new techniques. They are something i’ve always done from time to time but I didn’t use to have the confidence to post them or often even edit a lot of them! So many images just got deleted! Now I care less about what people think and more about why they are important to me. I just love art, and the process of creating something. I love music playing in the background while I do a shoot, my cats are often in the home studio with me playing around too. When I finish to self portrait I now feel lighter like I have less in my head.

Warning! I may actually sound like a grown up artist in this blog #deep.

here are my top 10 self portraits the reasons behind them and what artist inspire me!

Growth

I love this image, I like to look back at an image and remember how I felt while I was taken them. Good or bad. I remember being really happy (even if I look moody) while taking this, also covering myself in the paint was fun! Sometimes I get so excited shooting I just can not wait to edit, I love doing images like this, they make me incredibly happy. I wanted this to look like a painting, the lighting is quite flat but I like that about it. This was the start of a project where I felt inspired by growing as an artist, person and just becoming more confident. I do have some more plans for this project but for now I’m concentrating on other ideas!

Inside the frame- series

These were great fun to take and edit! I laughed at my self a lot making these. They are a mixture of long exposure and photoshop. I really love photoshop, I love taking an image and making it slightly off or a little weird. For example adding extra hands or another version of myself. I created these because I felt that I had over shared a little, like i’d put myself out there to much, showing a little to much vulnerability for my own liking. But I do want to be a artist and really progress with my work, so putting myself out there is just something I’m learning to be more comfortable with.

Skin

I often feel slightly off, I guess most artist do. We can be a bit strange, and people like to remind us of that. I’ll randomly get a weird idea for something I want to create, and I’ll mention it to people and they will just not get it at all. Some of the people closest to me really don’t get my work and thats ok. Art is subjective anyway! This was the first image of a series I started, all images were black and white and based on feelings and experiences. This was also the first series I posted on social media too where I felt it was ok for people to see what my thoughts behind my work was. When I started this series I also decided that I was going to go for it and open up more about my art and make the images that I wanted to make, for me not for others. I think it’s good for our mental health to be open, also I spend a lot of time working on these, so sharing why I create my work has now become part of the process.