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Self Portraits

It is like a selfie, but with art. 

Making a portrait is something I really like to do as an artist.  I know lots of artist have done it and two of my favorites are the self portraits of Vincent Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo.  I made my very first self portrait when I was 3-years-old in preschool.  Follow along with me as I learn about making self portraits and you can really see how I develop and grow as an artist.  My first self portrait was just a popsicle stick!

My third self portrait was from first-grade and one of the things I like about it is that you can see that I am growing as an artist.  I am getting stronger art muscles.  I like my pink lips and my purple earrings in this portrait.  I think this one shows my love of color and how I am starting to think about color more.

Helena Donato-Sapp, Self Portrait, Tempera Paint on Paper, 9W x 12H

(Below) It is really simple, isn’t it?  But what I like about it now that I look back at it is that I put a super hero cape on myself.

Helena Donato-Sapp 

Cape Self Portrait 2013

Paper and Popsicle

Each time you do a piece of art, you want to try and do more the next time.  This self portrait (Below) is also from preschool and I used my hand to make my face and hair.  I like this one because it shows that I have always loved my Black hair and how beautiful it is.  I like the pink ribbon in my hair.

Helena Donato-Sapp

 Hand Self Portrait 2014

Marker on Paper

One of the fun things we do in our family is try to find a famous piece of art that matches what I have done.  This reminds me that I am not alone as an artist.  Other great artist have done exactly what I am doing now.  Also, once we match my art with another famous artist, it gives me a chance to learn about that artist and how they expressed themselves too.

We found a Picasso that reminded us of my piece and look how good they look together!  Wow!  This is when I got really interested in Picasso.  I think our noses look similar.  What do you think?

Helena Donato-Sapp Self Portrait (2016)

Pablo Picasso Self Portrait (1907)

I also did portraits of my Daddy and Papa in first-grade to give to them for a gift and they look a lot like my own self portrait.  When we posted them on social media, someone said that they really looked just like the work of Amedeo Modigliani and so we looked that artist up too and I got to learn about him.  Modigliani and I draw the same kind of eyebrows!

(12W x 15H)

(12W x 15H)

(Top Left) Helena Donato-Sapp, Portrait of the Daddy 2016, (Top Right) Helena Donato-Sapp, Portrait of the Papa 2016, Crayon on Paper, Bottom Left) Amedeo Modigliani Portrait of the Mechanical 1917, (Bottom Right) Amedeo Modigliani Portrait De Paul Guillaume 1915

I started to learn more and more about making a self portrait.  Mr. Pickens is one of my art teachers at school and we learned about symmetry and facial proportion in his class.  I learned that artists often do a sketch of what they want to paint first.  It is like a rough draft in writing.  Here is my sketch and then my paint-on-canvas self portrait from second-grade.  I think I did pretty good on this one.  I would probably change the eyes a little bit, but I really like that blue stripe behind my head because it adds more color to my painting.

Helena Donato-Sapp, Purple Self Portrait 2017, Tempera on Canvas, 8W x 10H

Another thing I really like about making a self portrait is that you can use 2-D or 3-D.  I like clay and pottery and I am learning about that art as well.  This is my first time doing anything with clay and my self portrait looks like a scary Halloween skull mask!

We decided that my skull looks a lot like a Jean-Michel Basquiat!  I have seen his art at The Broad Museum in Los Angeles and he is now one of my favorite artists.  

Now I could have said that I didn’t like my clay self portrait, but that is judging art.  Instead, my parents and art teachers help me find a famous artist who has been acknowledged for doing something very close to my own art.  We started calling this “mirroring” - looking for the reflection of my art expression in the mirror of other great artists.  All of my favorite artist have come from the mirror of my own art.

Jean-Michel Basquiat Skull 1981

Below is my second self portrait using clay.  I did this in third-grade.  I didn’t do the ear very well and it fell off.  I was a little upset, but again my parents introduced me to Vincent Van Gogh and you probably already know this story, but he did a self portrait with only one ear too!  I could not believe this!

Helena Donato-Sapp, Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear 2017, Glazed Clay

I know they don’t look alike because mine is clay and Van Gogh’s is painting, but I think they do mirror each other because we both only have one ear!  And it doesn’t matter, because the point is that I mirror another artist and I got to learn a lot about Vincent Van Gogh.  Now I look for his art when we visit museums around the world.

Vincent Van Gogh Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear 1889

Here (Right or below) is another piece of self portrait pottery that I did.  I hope that each piece I do is a little bit better than the one I did before.  I hope that I am learning and improving.  I am taking everything I am learning about facial proportion and trying to make it look like me each time.

Helena Donato-Sapp 

Self Portrait in Clay 2016

Glazed Clay

My Papa is a really good photographer and he takes pictures of our lives together.  We’re really lucky because he is so good at it.  Of course, a photograph is a portrait, not a self portrait (unless you are taking a selfie).  But I wanted you to see a couple of Papa’s photographs of me in my dance class and show you how Papa introduced me to the great artist Edgar Degas.

Erwin “Sino” Donato, Photographer, Dancing Daughter 2016

Here is what my Papa did to help me be interested in Degas.  He put me right into Degas’ paintings!

This also has gotten me interested in photography as an art form and it is something I am starting to explore.

Edgar Degas The Dance Foyer at the Opera (1872) with Helena Donato-Sapp Inserted (2016)

Edgar Degas Dance Class (1873) with Helena Donato-Sapp Inserted (2016)

Art is serious, but art is also fun.  Don’t forget the fun part.

Helena Donato-Sapp 

Art Camp Self Portrait 2016

Charcoal on Paper

11W x 14H

This self portrait is from an art class I took at summer camp two years ago.  I didn’t draw this myself, but I helped with the shading and shadowing, which is what we were learning about at art camp.  This really looks a lot like me!

Helena Donato-Sapp, Spirit Animal Self Portrait 2016, Marker and Tempera Paint on Paper, 12W x 12H

This is my most recent self portrait and I did it in fourth-grade when I was 9-years-old.  We were to draw a self portrait with part of us being our spirit animal.  I chose a deer because my Grandpa in West Virginia likes deers a lot.  And I decided to do the rest of it in stained glass pieces because my Daddy loves stained glass and I thought he might like it.  Before we started this project, we learned about the artists Rosa Bonheur and Romero Britto.  Since both of these artist focus on animal portraits, we decided to create a self portrait and then transform ourselves into an animal.  We learned about color harmonies and different types of patterns.  We went through the process of creating regular and irregular patterns, outlining our selfie, painting our background, dividing our portrait into sections, and then filling each section with a different color harmony.  It’s going to be in an art show this week and lots of people are going to see it.

All of these are pieces of me.  They mirror me.  And each piece often mirrors another famous artist.  This way I can see myself reflected in the art I do and in the art throughout the ages.  I become part of the great art community.

When you see my first self portrait with my last self portrait, do you think I am learning a lot?  Am I growing as an artist?

For Christmas 2020, my parents had my piece of art made into an actual stained glass window!  It was done by a stained glass artist named Marti Cerling who lives in North Carolina.

Max Dupain, Violinist 1972                                                                Helena Donato-Sapp, Pandemic Violinist 2020

We were asked to do The Getty Challenge by our art teacher.  I wanted to highlight my violin because it is one of my passions.  My Papa took this photo.  Max Dupain is a famous Australian Modernist photographer who is known for a style of photography where he uses the geometric forms of architectural spaces.  In this picture (to the left), named Violinist 1971, the photographer captures the silhouette of a young voilinist rehearsing at a college in Sydney.  The photograph was used to promote the nation’s education system.  His photo is more formal than mine (on the right) because his was at a college and mine is in our living room.  His subject is dressed for school and I am in comfortable stay-at-home clothes because of the COVID quarantine.  I like the silhouette and the black-and-white elements.  I like the windows in the background and their use of line and pattern.  I also like the contrast of the lines in the window with the angles of our elbow and arms.  I like how in both pictures the light from the windows cast shadows on the floor.  I think you can see the movement in how the violin is being played.  I even put my hair in a ponytail so that our two images could mirror each other.

A friend recently asked me why I like self-portraits so much.  I thought you might be interested in four amazing portraits that my Daddy and Papa have had made of me because they show you where my love of this art form began.

The first portrait I ever had of myself my two fathers had done at a local gift shop.  An artist was there - we don’t remember his name, unfortunately - and he would look at you and do a silhouette of you.  I don’t remember it, but my Daddy & Papa say that it took him under a minute and he did it free-hand!  It hangs in our living room.

The second portrait of me was from this picture (right or above).  It was taken at my Uncle Brian and Uncle Russell’s house when they were having an Oscar party.  The photograph was taken by a local Long Beach photographer named Candice Bauman.  My parents adored this photo and my Daddy decided to do something special with it for my Papa’s Christmas present one year.

My Papa is from the Philippines and, long story short, friends of his know a famous artist in the Philippines named Roger San Miguel and he is a Master of Impressionism.  Daddy contacted the friends and after a long process of negotiation, Roger San Miguel agreed to paint this portrait of me.  By the way, Papa’s friends are the Manansala family and they are a family that is a part of a really important art legacy in the Philippines.  Vicente Silva Manansala was a very, very famous Filipino artist known for his Cubist paintings.

This painting has become my parents’ prized possession.  It hangs in our living room in a place of honor.

Below is the artist standing by the finished portrait.

This third portrait was my Christmas present from my Daddy & Papa.  The picture of me is from Daddy and Papa’s wedding in Paris.  I was the flower girl.  The picture is one of my parents’ favorite ones of me and they have it in a frame in our living room too.  Daddy found a wonderful quilt artist named Joanie Ogg Martin and she agreed to quilt the picture of me!  And, on the right, you see the finished quilt that I got to unwrap on Christmas morning!

This fourth portrait is new from the summer of 2020.  You might recognize the picture to the left because it is the one from the homepage of my website!  My parents asked artist Natalie Steigmann-Gall to paint it.  She is an artist from Columbus, Ohio.  My parents wanted something painted of me that was from my pre-teen years and this is one of their favorites.

Here is a photo of the artist, Natalie, with my portrait.  Our family thinks it is important to honor artists.

Oh My!  In the summer of 2020 during our COVID-19 lockdown, Joanie Ogg Martin - the amazing quilt artist who did my Paris quilt portrait - contacted us out of the blue and sent us another quilt portrait!  OMGosh, this is so cool!  The picture on the left is one my Papa did with one of those camera apps on his iPhone…and the quilt on the right is what Joanie sent us!  Art - and artists - am simply amazing!

Can you see now why this art form is important to me?  I guess you can say that it was kind of gifted to me by my Daddy & Papa!

I can’t wait to see what I get to do next!

Helena Donato-Sapp 

I See Myself Mirrored In Other Great Artists 2017

Marker on Paper

9W x 7 H

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