Giant Portraits
Upon deciding to take full advantage of my school’s unlimited black & white printing, I first blew up a photo by Brandon Carr to 10 feet wide by 6.5 feet tall, then pulled it into Photoshop and divided it into 8.5×11” sections. This first project ended up being 95 sheets of printer paper that I displayed in my dorm room at the time.
A similar piece was displayed in the mid-year student art show.
Above: Seniors Brandon Carr and Michael Knepprath pose next to their piece entitled “The Couch.” Knepprath remarked, “It received quite a bit of positive feedback at the show, including the janitor telling me how much he loved the couch because it reminded him of the 70s. The piece is ultimately a memorial to this couch. We had to throw it away due to how nasty and smelly it was!” Sophomore Tracey Melhouse praised Carr and Knepprath's creativity saying, “I love this mural because it is so them; they captured themselves well.”
Unfortunately, the black & white yearbook photo doesn't do it justice here. My school gave each student a limited number of color prints, so I thought it'd be clever to only use color in certain tiles and print the rest in black & white.
Here it is sliced up:
For the end-of-year student art show I decided to go even bigger. I illustrated a portrait of myself and followed the same process, except this time the piece ended up being 323 sheets of paper, or 12 feet wide by 17.5 feet tall.
I was on a lift for a full day hanging it up.
Does anyone want to assist me in sticking paper to a wall? Any help would be appreciated! YFAC 2:30pm.
— Michael Knepprath (@mknepprath) April 27, 2010
For context, check out the size of the artwork below my portrait:
Ben Lundsten made an accompanying piece in response to this final portrait, and we were both featured in the yearbook that year!
