Material Based Portrait 

For this project, we were instructed to create a portrait of anything we wanted, with materials that related to our subject. I chose to make a portrait of my mom. She really likes tea, so I used tea leaves and tea cups. She also is good at crafts and loves the beach so I added shells and ribbons. I had three versions of this project. I started by sketching my mother and my grandmother on the canvas and painting the basic color background for the image.  I ended up deciding to take out my grandmother and do a more zoomed-in image of my mother, so I could add more detail, and use more materials. In my first version of my mom's portrait, I attempted to use chunks of the tea cups as the background, but they were too big, and not supported by the canvas. In the end, I decided to use the tea cup shards to add color to her eyes and lips. I then cut open teabags and used the leaves to add a new texture to her hair. I wanted an interesting background so I added shells and ribbons to add more of her personality to the piece.