Artist's Statement:

Jillian Wight

Medsker

2D Design

7 January 2021

In my work, the idea of body positivity is visually prominent. I also tried to illustrate many of the hardships that girls must overcome on a daily basis relating to body image. This is evident in the juxtaposition of the skeletons next to the full, living torsos. The colors of the skeletons are cold and dark, and the shading I used in this section makes it appear cavernous, empty, and gloomy. This conveys the drained, tired, and emotionally scarred state of girls who are told they must make serious sacrifices including food, mental and physical health, and social time in order to fit society’s standards of perfection. The more colorful shaded bodies appear in warm colors, or are positioned in front of lively patterns. My goal here was to let the viewer know that all bodys are beautiful, and the happiness and relief that one feels when they accept themselves is immeasurable. There are numerous other significant elements in my piece. For example, the snake symbolizes the tendency that many girls have to put others down or mistreat their friends behind their backs using social media or personal contact. This is also illustrated in the bottom left corner by two flowers, one of which is cutting off the others’ head. My version of the “Hands of God'' symbolize the value of relationships to girls and how these relationships help validate and support those involved. The tension between the hands, which are almost touching but not quite, is illustrated with yellow wavy lines that explode from the point of prospect contact. I also used various words, representational patterns, and emotional facial features to convey the torrent of emotions girls feel related to their bodies and their perceptions of themselves. This project relates to my life because as a young girl, I have both witnessed and experienced body shaming. In the digital era, social media is a place that makes it easy to insult others with the shield of the screen to hide behind. Whether it is an offhand comment or an intentional insult, it is hard for others to understand how much it hurts to be held to standards that are constantly changing. Body shaming can have a huge impact on young girls, and I wanted to draw light to the issue because it deserves to be recognized. Life is short, and women should not have to go through it constantly worrying about things like how much food they are eating.

I used a number of materials to create the final product, including felt tip pen, ballpoint pen, fine point pen, gel pen, dual-brush markers, multimedia paper, colored pencil, and sharpie marker. I started by using markers and fine-point pens to create the strawberries. I then layered with many other colors and thicknesses of marker. I finished by adding highlights with gel pen, and shadows with black fine point pen. I then used a blue fine-point pen to create trippy, wavy lines, and let these lines guide the rest of the illustration. In general, dual brush markers were used to create ombres and any shading, the gel point pens were used for the skeletons, as well as highlights in fruit, and for the one-line designs I added, and the various other types of pens were used to illustrate details, lines, and patterns. I used colored pencils to shade around the lips that I drew, which emphasized them and added variations in color to the piece.

The flow of the image is largely pattern-driven, and so to interrupt the repetitiveness, I added lots of funky coloration and tried to incorporate shades that did not already appear on the page. In general, the element of line was very important to create movement through my piece, and helped to guide the viewer's eye over the page. Color helped to emphasize the emotions I wanted to portray, and helped me illustrate the symbols I wanted to associate my work with. Finally, form played an essential role in making the piece realistic and relatable to the viewer. After all, the value of art is in the interpretation! I am very happy with this creation, and I think it evolved a lot as I worked due to my "trust the process" approach. I think my next steps should be to experiment more with this style of art, in order to really finesse my composition skills.

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