Irin Yela’s Value Portraits

When I first began tracing, I wasn’t sure how it would turn out to be since it looked very strange. This is due to the fact that I didn’t follow the typical guideline of painting all the layers as I go on. Instead, I approached utilizing a different method. I only worked with one color and finished it completely before picking up another layer. This method made my work look very abstract at first, but then it started to slowly become coherent. While I was painting, I was really enjoying it as all the colors came together and essentially created the same image as in the photo. But I do have to say, using the black paint was a little difficult as it was incredibly thick and hard to paint with. However, I am very pleased with the end result and enjoyed this experience as well.

Paper about Gordon Park’s Life:

Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks, better known as Gordon Parks, used his pen and
his camera as a weapon. He had many professions, he was a Scottish sports journalist, former footballer, American photographer, musician, composer, writer and film director. But he is mostly known for his photographs. He wanted to go to college but was advised “not to waste his parent’s money, since all the [colored] students will become a farmer, servant or a maid”. Later when his mother passed away when he was 15, he went to his aunt’s place and later on he was homeless, from there he started his life. He would do odd jobs to make a living and strive to live. Gordon Parks was a person with amazing luck as well as someone who knew how to take risks and find opportunity to do what he wanted and loved to do. Because of him we have snippets of different types of lives others have lived.

Park’s work demonstrates mood, a sense of compassion, expressiveness and deceptively
complex composition, we as young artists have a lot to learn from it. We learn the expression of lights and shadows, how he uses the broad value range to show different compositions as dramatic, joy or sadness. We can also learn about the figure and ground relationship, where the background plays a big role in the figure being photographed.