VISual Art Seniors Group C

Inner Portraits

Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop

I interpreted this assignment as a way to show others my ability as an artist, to accomplish this I used Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to make two collages, both of which depicts a different side to who I am as an artist and what I can accomplish.

Self Portrait

Pen and Ink on Paper

I created this drawing for a literal self portrait. I used pen, ink, and paper to create this piece because they are familiar to me and I can really capture the styling with less colors. My intention was to show how I’d look as a self portrait in my own little world.

Reflection

watercolor

This piece represents self reflection and a longing to meet my future self. Self portraits are vulnerable because it is hard to understand how others perceive me. I have different sides of myself that I decide to show. I created a watercolor painting to show the layers that make up a person. I am in a bathroom because I judge my outer appearance the most in that room.

quien es?

paint, cards, glitter

I made to show how I felt and wanted others to see me. I wanted to do it like a mural for sure.

Spacey

Watercolor

I created this piece to show how intimidating I can be on first sight impression. This piece also shows what is happening in my head.

Under the neck is supposed to look like my skin color to show I’m still human underneath all of the mystery. The space aspect is to simulate the act of my imagination taking over and how it gives me an intimidating look on my face.

Clarity

Pen on Paper

I created Clarity as a projection of myself. People scan a person’s fleeting images and actions when first meeting them to develop a picture of them. It is a hastily put together perception of a person which creates a first impression. This first impression can be simultaneously accurate and offbase.

Neverending Crossroads

Ink on Paper

This prompt sounded so interesting and every idea I had didn't seem like enough. Eventually I settled on doing two black and white pieces for both my portraits. My intention through this was to paint a bit of a grim picture, to up the factor of this dark lens I tend to have on my life and the world. I'm not exactly sure of anything going for me right now and that's what the box of bewildering lines represents, and its box shape was almost meant to trap me in. I want it to show this dazed, black and white kind of pessimistic perspective I have currently and how it feels escapeless and lonely. A part of this piece is the use of negative space. I used that box shape and framed myself in with all this chaos to show this state being cripplingly lonely, and everything else seemingly not knowing of or being involved in this internal struggle. I look back at it now and feel as if I should've done something to make it stand out more, but i'm really happy about the portrayal of aspects in the piece. I'm proud of the stippling on the figure and the clean linework. I feel I put on paper, the idea I had at the time, really well. I made sure not much outside myself influenced this piece. I very much wanted it to come from me as much as possible. I used myself for reference and my brain for the concepts. I just wanted this to really represent me, and I feel like I did a decent, but not exactly great job of it.

Yee-Haw

Paint and Alcohol Markers on Paper

I have always struggled on finding a nice way to portray myself, I always ended up changing something, but I wanted to be honest with myself. This piece was also a test of my posca paint pens, and I love the way they worked with the alcohol markers so much that I decided to mess around with my background. The word howdy also comes from a phase I had where that was the only way I ended up greeting people.

What You See (SNOT)

acrylic on canvas

I created this piece by trying to remember what I look like from memory. The memory I chose was me standing in front of my bathroom mirror, in a sweatshirt, blank stare.

Mirror View of Me

acrylic on canvas

I wanted this piece to really show how I feel people see me when they don't know me. I wanted to show how casted out and behind the scenes I feel around people who aren't similar to me or aren't my friends. This is why I places a foreground part to my piece, it helped push back my figure and create that feeling. I also gave myself a blank expression as a way to show how uninteresting it may be to someone to get to know me or even see me at all. It is blank with no emotion, no reason to know them, just a person in the back. I originally was painting a door on the front of my shirt for this piece to signify that I am willing to show people me, but then unfortunately I dropped a pallet knife and it completely ruined what I had there so I decided another metaphor could work out just as well.

Laundry Day

acrylic and cotton fabric on canvas

I chose to try out some new techniques while completing this painting, drawing from impressionists like Claude Monet. I took the prompt both literally and figuratively. In this painting, I am pinning a figure onto a clothesline. This figure also represents me; however, it’s an old me, a dirty me that needs to be washed and dried before it is tucked away.

I wanted this piece to represent my constant physical changes. I am rapidly switching through outward identities that it’s almost like I am just “trying them on.”

Dad-bod

gouache, acrylic, ink, colored pencil

I created this piece during the lockdown in April. During lockdown I was struggling with both my body image and gender identity. Though I have always been female and identify with my assigned gender, I've always felt as though I was forced to be more masculine than I wanted. Male figures in my family would make jokes about my body whenever I tried to present more feminine. During lockdown I had much more time to reflect on these feelings and the best way I could describe them was feeling like a deadbeat dad, lazy, toxically masculine, but comfortable.