A2 Oil Pastel Portrait

This is a larger version of the other portrait I made, the paper size is A2. The artist normally creates portraits in epic sizes in monochrome or one colour.

 Blue + purple with lots of white to completely blend the two colours.

Jewellery made by different variation of green dots.

Black was used as base before adding brown for hair colour.

Added black again on top of the brown, the hair was dyed brown and showed roots of black reappearing in the photo.

A4 Oil Pastel Portrait

 This work was inspired by Yan Pei Ming's art style, where his brush strokes are rough and clear to see. I used oil pastel because the dry medium is able to create the same rugged texture as the artist.

Yan Pei Ming - Barack Obama's Portrait in Oil Pastel

This the portrait of Barack Obama I recreated using oil pastel. I first tried out the medium by recreating a small portion.

I used five oil pastels; Sepia, grey, gold, silver and black. I tried to minimise how much I use black because it is a dominating colour and if I use it too much, the image will come out too dark.

Another oil pastel practice, with the rest of the face. I used the same oil pastels for this piece as well. The colours I used for the closest in colour to the original piece by Yan Pei Ming.

Yan Pei Ming - Mao Zedong's Portrait

<-Yan Pei-Ming, Portrait of Mao, 1999

 Using graphite, I made a continuous line before using tones and shades on the portrait. I used landscape instead of portrait because I only wanted to draw the upper half of Mao Zedong's portrait and also fill up the paper. The graphite was hard to use because the line was quite thick and difficult to make a portrait with it. I didn't put much effort on the eyes because it wasn't the main focus, this study was to be able to recreate the portrait's outline with a continuous line in a short time.

Yan Pei Ming

Born in Shanghai in 1960, Yan Pei Ming is a Chinese contemporary painter who is famous for his epic sized portraits of Mao Zedong.









His portraits work have a old worn out effect, which would go well with the theme of faded memories. creating large-scale, monochrome portraits. His works have dynamic and passionate actions, his brush strokes are rough and strong, it shows how he was raised up during the Cultural Revolution when youths were sent to the farmlands to be taught about the conditions of their rural country and how they must be strong to help China prosper.
When looking up close at his work, you can see how messy it is but from a distance, the portraits look from clean and normal portrait like. This is to show that you shouldn't judge anyone because no one is truly perfect, once you get close to them you can see all their flaws and mess just like in the portraits.

(Obama, 2008)

Reference:

1. http://ropac.net/uploads/images/artist/artistb6393b7b78cff3cf1b7d826f7805b905.png

2. Yan Pei-Ming, Obama, 2008 Photo: André Morin © Yan Pei-Ming, ADAGP, Paris, 2009