S.I. #4

This is a mirrored portrait of my older sister, Sophia. The two faces are connected by lines and portrayed against a background of red. One face is brightly colored while the other is left blank to show contrasting sides of a person's personality. Someone could be cheery and friendly some days but have an emotionless harsh demeanor on others. Growing up with Sophia I've seen all different sides to her but I chose to show kindness, solitude, and confidence. The colors, again, are expressing warmth and that kindness, while the blank face represents solitude and strength. The red background is meant to show her projected confidence and passion. I chose to convey these ideas about my sister through her portrait because these personality traits affect the way I and others conceive her and it's interesting to see how she changes and presents herself to the world as we grow up.

I created this portrait using Prismacolor markers, acrylic paint, Sharpie, graphite, tracing paper, and bristol board. As usual, I use bristol for its durability and smooth texture pairing great with ink and paint. The tracing paper and graphite were the foundation of this portrait. Prismacolors provide vibrant, opaque colors, and the Sharpie helped to define lines. I used paint for the background because I could cover a larger space faster that way and I created a cloudy texture around the main figure.

I began with choosing a selfie my sister had taken of herself, then traced it off of my laptop onto tracing paper. I then scribbled graphite onto the flip side of the tracing paper, then taped it to the bristol board. Using a 2H pencil, I went over the original tracing, therefore transferring the scribbled graphite onto the bristol board, printing the image. I then noticed that while scribbling on the back of the tracing, I had transferred the original drawing onto a scrap piece of paper, but now mirrored. This inspired me to incorporate the mirrored face into the portrait, so this time I aligned the tracing next to the first print the way I wanted, then scribbled over the top to press the graphite onto the paper. My original idea was to have the mirrored faces blurring together, but then I started tracing in ink and decided to connect the two using lines. I set the intention to try out a new style of this vibrant thermal vision type style which I used on her face. I used soft shapes to convey the curves and texture of her face, lighter colors where there are highlights and deeper ones where there are shadows. Red, to me, holds confidence, so I washed the background red and brought it up onto her figure to make it appear as though she is submerged in the color. Et voila, Sophia's mini portrait is complete. If I were to continue, though, I might expand the background and incorporate other facial expressions into the mix or symbolic items.