The art movement I chose for this piece was expressionism mixed with a little realism.  Realism was referring to the image of myself being accurate to life without any alterations made to emphasize a certain detail.  Instead of modifying the face to draw attention to the image I used the magazine letter cutouts glued around the image to show expressionism.  The artist who I took inspiration from was Edvard Munch’s, The Scream (first photo below).  I liked how they focused on the emotions portrayed through the painting.  I drew me in and was the most interesting part of the work.  I attempted to replicate that feeling with a realistic touch through my image. 

I created my piece by starting with the person in the middle and sketching where the face arm positions, hair, etc. would be before starting to create shapes to match the image it is based off (second image below).  Then I filled in the value with graphite pencils and left the space around the outside to be done with black sharpie.  The letters I used had a variety of color, fonts, and sizes, to five the illusion of it being crowded busy balancing out the black space outside of it.  Also, only using color with the letters provided a contrast and arguably an outline of the image.  I related my piece to Munch’s through the emotion expressed through art.  Both my work and his show the person screaming, or the illusion of them screaming depending on how it is looked at.  Furthermore, I also used movement through the outline of the letters, where Munch used movement with the wavy lines of the mountains and sky. 

My idea was to have an image of someone with the letters around them.  The letters can be portrayed and the person’s voice or the voices of those around them.  Depending on the way you see it you can either have the person trying to block out the voices or trying to yell out above them to have their voice heard.  My idea is similar because of emotions within the pieces, but they are different because of the way they are portrayed.  I used graphite where he used paint.   Mine was based off of realism as well so the lines are clean and defined, where with Munch, used lines that were free moving.  Also, Munch had a color palette of blues, yellows, and oranges, where I used majorly black and white until I got to the letters and used vibrant colors from there.