SI #11

The idea behind this project was to show how much people's visions of their body is taking over their feelings of happiness. Often times when people struggle with body dismorphia or eating, it takes away a lot of the happiness they had as a child when they don't thinnk much or care about that kind of thing. Through this piece I wanted to show that by making the colors underneath stronger than the photo above to show how this distorted view of one's body takes over the happiness we had as a kid.

I used colored pencil for the stomach underneath because the colors were really bright, especially on the black paper that I used. I wanted them to be pretty bright so that they showed through the printed picture. It also allowed me to play with the colors, and not use the realistic skin tone of the photograph. I then printed out a photo of myself as a kid on transparent paper which allowed me to use a real photo, connecting to that idea of real experience of happiness.

I started out with the photo, I had to pose my mom in the right way that I wanted to get the photo so I could copy the shadows and shapes as exactly as possible. I then started picking out colors, which colors would be my shadows and which colors would be my highlights then made the drawing underneath. It didn't turn out quite how I had hoped because the colors weren't as consistent so it wasn't obvious what the drawing was of. I then had to pick out a photo of myself smiling as a kid which wasn't terribly hard! I then printed it out on transparent paper, it took multiple tries to get down the opacity and color that I wanted. At first it was in color and it took over the background drawing too much, but then in black and white the background of the photo was distracting, but then without the background my hair was too dark, finally I found the right shade and taped it on.