SI #3

I think when a lot of people think about imperfections they think about physical traits. I know that body image issues are always a worry and I wanted to make a painting that showed off those traits. For my mom, she is insecure about her stomach because it's stretched out from having kids. I think that her stomach is actually really cool and I like that you can tell how much work it went through to hold my twin brothers and I.

I didn't originally know what materials I wanted to use for this painting, but I knew I wanted to experiment with a large canvas and big strokes. It took me a long time to decide between using paint sticks or acrylics. In the end, I used acrylic paint for the body because I thought it would allow for bigger strokes with a big paintbrush and I used paint sticks for lines, highlights, and the blue background.

I asked my mom to model for the painting because I needed a shot of the perspective (from the feet) and her stomach. I used this picture as my starting idea for the painting, but added a chest and arms so that the stomach wasn't just floating above some feet. This project was pretty experimental for me because I'd never done that perspective of the feet and body. I wanted the feet to be big and the main focus, but wanted to make sure the stomach wrinkles and rolls were apparent. I had to add some small lines and details for that which I hadn't anticipated in the beginning because I was trying to experiment with bigger lines. This was actually really hard to do because I always have trouble not blending or perfecting strokes, but it's something I want to keep trying. Some next steps for the painting could be to repaint the feet or body because I don't really like how the texture turned out.