Scholastics #2

This project was inspired by the prompt from Scholastics New York Life. My mother died of a heart attack on December 12th, 2006. I was there when she died and that has always stuck with me. Even though I didn't fully understand what was happening then, as I grew older, I began replaying that moment in my head; reliving it. I've never been someone that likes talking about myself, so getting help for myself was not easy. But over the years, I've managed to figure out how to deal with the grief I didn't fully understand when I was younger. Grief is different for everybody, but for me my head was full of my sad and angry thoughts; I didn't want to talk about it, I said I was fine, when in reality, I did want to talk about it and I was not fine. But once I started to figure everything out and talk about it more and once I finally reached closure, I could begin to see the light around me, all the opportunities and things in my life that I was grateful for. There is hope for healing and once you see that, your mind is freed. I wanted my piece to have a positive element to it, which is why I added the magazine pieces around the face.

First, I needed a reference image. I used another self-portrait that I took and switched it to grayscale. I then printed it and paid special attention to the lights and darks of the image. I used .1, .3, .5 Micron pens, using the thicker ones for the dark areas and the thin pen for the light areas. I used words and phrases that describe grief and then I cut magazine pieces of words that positive and hopeful. There was still a white negative space between the words and the face so I added lines to fill it.

When in the lighter areas of the face, I spaced the words out so that there was more white value. I was originally going to have more words, but I couldn't find any words small enough to fit in the spaces. If I was going to fix something, I think I would want to change the line values around the face.