Linoprint Portrait Series
I like the idea of making things that feel handmade and unique — even if a work is reproduced, there is something special about a process that carries a personal touch. So when I carved a face for my orange portrait as part of the color portrait project, it got me thinking — could I use this same block to make multiple different portraits, each one feeling distinct?
The first one I had in mind was an American/European portrait with that classic old Hollywood hairstyle with the curled ends — the kind you see in old American movies and shows like Mad Men.
With the facial features already carved into the block, I just needed to add the hair, and that alone was enough to give it the look I wanted.
Next I wanted to do an African portrait. Initially I wanted to leave out the hair and just add some decoration to the face, but I felt it could do with some hair after all. The decorative elements were referenced from Pinterest — though with Pinterest increasingly populated by AI images, which initially felt unique in a way but has become tiring, I am not entirely sure how accurate the reference was.
For the Indian portrait I looked at references of ancient and royal Indian fashion. They featured a lot of jewellery — nose rings, earrings, bindis, head decorations.
I decided to keep it focused and added a simple nose ring using diamond pieces I had on hand, something I had been wanting to incorporate into an artwork for a while, and this was the perfect first opportunity to try it out.
I used another diamond piece alongside actual kumkum for the bindi, similar to those decorative sticker bindis. For the head decoration I used diamond pieces along with enamel accents I found at Make and Mend, a second hand art store.
This piece also served as useful groundwork for my purple portrait in the color portrait series. I tried giving the face blue eyes using blue enamel accent to distinguish them from the rest of the face, but it didn't work — it was too bright and looked a bit alien.
The last one was a Japanese portrait, specifically a geisha with heavy makeup and hair decoration. I decided to keep things simple — indicating a hair stick using oil pastel, adding a touch of red for the makeup, and for the flowers I cut out some flower shapes to use as three dimensional decorative elements. I wanted to experiment with incorporating a physical paper cutout into the piece.
This was a short and explorative project. The portraits printed in white came out nicely, but for the black prints I feel the eyes could use some white.
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