Assignment 5

 

    

Title: When It Rains

These drawings are vague self-portraits. The first is me, age 6. As a child, I never cut my hair. I was tan, with long blonde hair to the backs of my knees. I loved the color yellow and going to church on Sundays with my granny. I was a social butterfly; a model little country rose who had a big happy family who doted on her. I rarely ever cried. Until the day I had to hand a letter to my mother. We were in Granny’s cute yellow kitchen, with arched windows and dog bowls lining the wall. In the letter, were the final words and the final drawing to my Granny. They were to be burned with her ashes. She would never read them. It was the first time I felt a pain so raw I couldn’t sob. The tears fell without a sound. The flowers in the garden wouldn’t bloom right next year without her. Fast forward to the second portrait, age 19. This is me now. I’ve grown numb to loss. Death after death throughout my childhood has left me the husk of an adult. I only have one surviving person I can truly call my family. Granny (heart failure) Dad (heart attack), Jeanne (disease), Great Grandma (Alzheimer’s), Nikki (surgical accident), Kyle (unknown), Jodie (organ failure), Carol (hit and run), Everett (house fire), Lisa (cancer), Beni (disease), Astrid (disease), all gone in 13 years. I don’t understand the cruelties of life. I don’t know if I ever will. People like to tell me I’m strong, or brave, but that only angers me more. I don’t want to be strong. I want to grieve. I want to live a normal, happy life. My brain has begun to attack itself from the trauma. I now suffer from seizures, heart issues, and severe mental illness. I am not brave, nor a survivor, I am simply suffering under the weight of loss. I am doing all I can to achieve some form of normalcy in my life. Therapy, prescriptions, treatment plans, doctor’s visits, recreational hobbies, volunteering, anything that will give me back the spark for the life I had before the losses began to pile up. Art is one of the few things that helps me cope. My goal with these drawings is to share the weight of my grief and give a small look into how heavy and harsh it feels to have only one person left whom you can call family. The first image is lacking in detail and more "clean", implying my simplicity in life and my youth. The second image is more rugged, showing how hardened and tired I have grown. The backgrounds also show how hard things have been for me. The first image is my first loss, the first shadow to darken the background. In the second image, the entire background is darkened, and the foreground is beginning to darken too, the two wooden doors resemble grief and loss closing me in, but they arent shut yet, showing my hope for a brighter future, and my unwillingness to completely give up just yet. 

Assignment 4

 

A candle as it is melting.

Assignment 3

 Sketches:

Final Portrait:

Inspiration and creative process:

These three artists, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Yayoi Kusama, and Egon Schiele were my main inspirations in the creative process behind my self-portrait. I did not want to go so literal in creating a self-portrait, as a drawn image of my face can only tell you so much about my character and it does not leave as much room for the type of self-expression I favor.

I wanted my self-portrait to paint a picture of me, not in the blatant “this is what I look like” way, but in an artistic interpretation of who I am as a person type of way. I knew from the get-go I wanted to replicate Basquiat’s heavy-handed linework, and use of unnatural symbols such as text boxes and star-like shapes. I also wanted to include the vagueness of Kusama’s face, as it only gives the impression of her looks, not a direct line. I also enjoyed Schiele’s emphasis on the face and hands, leaving the clothing much less detailed. I decided to add the things that I enjoyed from these artists to my own work in graphite on paper and drew myself. I decided to add my nervous system as a second entity in the drawing, to represent the fact I am a very logic-driven person, but also because the fact I have neurological issues plays a major role in my life, and is a huge part of me as a person as it affects everything I do. My face is drawn vaguely, as my most recognizable traits aren’t really my face, but my skunk-colored hair and large glasses.

Assignment 2

 Minky fabric drawn on paper with vine charcoal.

Assignment 1

 I'd like to start this entry by wishing everyone a happy valentines day. I hope yours was lovely. I unfortunately almost went to the hospital today, after a few weeks of medical complications, but I'll leave that at that. Let's get into the assignment. Here are my sketches, in order of amount of time allotted:

I will be honest in saying I'm not particularly proud of any of these, and I was physically incapable of doing 9 and 10 minutes standing, so those pieces are missing. There was a large time gap between the 7 and 8-minute drawings, as I stopped at the 7 minutes drawing the day before I got Covid. Ever since I had gotten Covid, it has been worsening other issues for me and has been emotionally taxing. This gives me a fondness for my 8-minute sketch of my dearly loved cat. The sketches before I fell ill were very run-of-the-mill, clean, and technical, whereas my 8-minute drawing felt much more loose and personal. The longer I stood to draw, the more it started to hurt, and I found comfort in my cat's dreamy resting face. My lines have more character and emotion behind them, and though they strayed from proper technique, I'm much happier with the product that is 8 than the rest. Maybe it's just me being proud I was able to push through how awful I feel in order to make something. I'm not certain, but now I will get onto more "technical" critiques, rather than just my feeling. I believe as time went on, my lines got much heavier from repeatedly passing the same spots, which is a flaw I managed to correct a bit in my 6,7, and 8. I can tell my inner cartoonist is struggling with not drawing chunky lines and doing cell shading, as those are what come to me naturally. I think I did a decent job with silhouettes and shapes, but my shading and texture work could use some improvement and practice.

I hope these are what was being looked for, I will be honest that I struggled with directions. I should have reached out and asked for help, but it is late for that now. I will do better next time.

I hope in a few posts I'm in good health, and you guys will be able to see proper performance out of me. Have a lovely week.