Ideas that are visually evident in my work is that I want it to capture the concept of having to fake a smile. You can see this in my work where the two hands are forcing the person's mouth to smile. I wanted my work to look dramatic which is why I used oil pastels and wasn’t worried about it looking messy. This work relates to my life because I've learned that when you're dealing with mental health issues the world doesn't stop and a lot of the time you just have to put on a smile.

My work was made with mostly oil pastels and watercolors but I also used crayons and acrylic paint. I used painters tape to protect my borders and I started my work by sketching my idea out with a pencil.

The processes I used to create my art was I started off by sketching out my idea and then I went over it in oil pastels. My next step after that was to fill in my background using watercolors and acrylic paint. My project really started to evolve when I stopped worrying if it looked messy. It also started to look more finished when I added the white blobs to the background so it wasn’t as boring. I think my next step could have been to make my border black instead of white.