For this project, we were first assigned to choose an artist that we were interested in and do some research on them (the slideshow). We were then told to create a background for our gridded self-portraits inspired by the artist we had chosen, but first, we assigned to create thumbnail sketches to get some ideas down. The materials I used to create my artist inspired background were colored pencils and fine liner pens. I first made squiggly smiley faces in pencil throughout my paper, outlined the smiley faces in pen, and then colored the smiley faces in with colored pencils.

The elements of art I used in my background drawing were just lines. I used squiggly lines to create a graffiti-like look for the smiley faces.

I do like the weird smiley face design I chose. The type of artwork Banksy creates is street art, with his signature stencil style he uses. I tried to make the smiley faces look like graffiti. With the thicker looking smiley faces, I tried to make them look like stencils to add Banksy's signature style to my background. I do like how they came out, I think they look pretty cool. Banksy also always has a meaning behind his work; I chose smiley faces because well, I love them, I think they're cool. But I also chose them because I have a tattoo of one with a very fun memory behind it; so whenever I look at the tattoo of the smiley face, it makes me happy. Wow, that sounded cheesy. I do like how my background came out.