Mechanical Paradox

For this project the prompt was "mechanical paradox". Originally I struggled to come up with an idea because the prompt was so different from what I normally do. Because I wanted to work on my realistic portrait skills I chose to do a portrait of a young women. When looking for reference photos I stumbled upon a young woman with a flower crown who looked very majestic. She reminded me of Frida Kahlo who I believe is a great female role model. I ran with this idea and made her flower crown out of gears. I sketched the woman with a pencil and used a stencil to get the shape of the gears.

I like working in pen so I thought I'd stick with a medium I was comfortable with and switch up my style. One of my favorite projects was the hands project from 2D design that depicts a naked woman with her arms crossed over her chest. I used pen to create a stippling effect. I really love how that piece turned out so I decided to use that technique in this project. The only difference in technique was in my other project I outlined some details but this piece is entirely made out of dots. The stippling reminds me of bugs that makes the piece more futuristic to me. I used more or less dots to convey highlights or shadows. I purposefully brought out certain features with shading such as her eyes (specifically the bags under her eyes) and her cheekbones. She has a very sharp face. She almost looks like an alien with how round her head is at the top and the prominent sagging on her neck. I added a twist-up key in her mouth to keep with the mechanical theme. I bounced back and forth between a lot of ideas for the background but in the end used a gradient effect from all the edges in. I thought it was simple and not distract from the face. I kept this piece black and white because I like the contrast and because I like the simplicity.

Overall this piece took a lot of time and effort; I kept going back in to add more contrast and shading. Part of the reason why I think this piece was so successful was because I drew the whole thing out before I made any permanent marks on the paper. This is one of the strongest pieces I've ever created.