Self-Portrait With Hunger

A man and his late lunch

DIGITAL ART

Fran

5/30/20241 min read

Nine years ago, in May 2015, I visited London, and on my first day, I was so excited exploring the city that I completely forgot to eat until well into the day. By mid-afternoon, I was starving and found a place near Trafalgar Square that caught my attention because of its name: Garfunkel's.

I decided to go in, and after being seated by the waiter and having chosen my dish, while waiting, I discreetly took a couple of photos of the place with my Nikon Coolpix P520, as I found it very cozy, and also took the opportunity to snap a selfie. I might have managed to be discreet when taking photos of the place, but taking a selfie with that Nikon wasn't particularly easy.

Anyway, the spaghetti Bolognese was delicious, and the day went on, like the rest of my trip. The best photos and videos ended up on my social media, and that improvised selfie got lost among so many images that I never had much time to pay attention to it.

Until a couple of years ago

I was going through the folder of London photos and found it. Honestly, I was amused by the almost sad expression on my own face, anxiously waiting for the waiter to bring the food.

Fran de Souza at Garfunkel's, London, 2015
Fran de Souza at Garfunkel's, London, 2015

So, I started working on that photo with various stages of manipulation in Inkscape, then overlaid in Gimp and subjected to more filters, until it became an almost abstract piece.

In the last few days, I rediscovered that work I did just to pass the time, blended a couple of textures on top to take away some of that digital harshness, and this is the result I share below.

Texture Attack: Self-Portrait With Hunger digital art by Fran de Souza
Texture Attack: Self-Portrait With Hunger digital art by Fran de Souza