Final Portrait Project Submission

Artist Statement

While looking at this illustration you will see a few things that I feel represent me at this time. First, I drew a silhouette of a person that symbolizes me and the flower coming out of her hand symbolizes my love of plants and nature. I painted the representation of myself a mixture of purple and mostly blue, because they are 2 of my favorite colors and they also represent my quiet and somewhat reserved personality. In the top left corner I drew space, mostly because I really like galaxy designs and my mind wonders about the empty void out there. The old looking tv represents my childhood, I watched a lot of tv and cartoons and it would be one of my favorite pastimes. Watching a lot of cartoons made me interested in animation and art styles, and made me want to try to draw. The PlayStation logo on the tv is there because throughout my entire life I play a lot of video games on PlayStation and nintendo but within the last two years it has primarily been the PS4. Playing video games has been a good escape for me, I’ve made some really good friends through the internet and had a lot of fun sitting around listening to their stories. My portrait highlights a few of the many things that make me happy.  

In my artwork, I used water colors, colored pencils, a micron pen, and a gelly roll (white) pen, to create a portrait that I felt expressed myself. I primarily used watercolors, because I wanted to try something new, but before I began to paint I used a pencil and micron pen to sketch and add line art to my portrait. After I finished with the line art I picked out the colors I wanted to paint with and mixed a few new shades of blue and purple together and used those colors to paint my silhouette. For the TV I used brown water colors but then I colored over it with a brown colored pencil because I wasn’t happy with how it turned out. Next, I painted the PlayStation logo, I started with a bright red watercolor and filled in the “P”. I decided to let that dry and started to paint my background, I wanted to create an atmosphere and feeling of space so I mixed together darker shades of blue and purple and blotted the two near each other. Then I some black water color to make it feel more like space but it didn’t look too good so before it dried I used a white watercolor to lighten it. Once all that finished drying I painted my planets various colors, finished my PlayStation logo, and flowers. Afterwards, I took a white gelly roll pen and added a few lines to my galaxy, filled in some stars, and added dots as small stars. Once I had done all that, the only thing left to do was go over my lineart with a micron pen again. This piece doesn’t really relate to any previous work besides old doodles. I don’t have a consistent art style, but for this project I wanted to keep it simple, while still having decent details.

A new technique I learned was dividing my colors. Before I blended and changes the overall look of my portrait, the silhouette was blue changing to purple. Being able to keep those colors noticeably divided can be a challenge. I experimented more with blending and I feel like that came out alright. Im most proud of how my entire piece came out, it could’ve been better, but I’m really happy with the outcome since I pretty much never paint. If I could change anything or redo this project I’d probably do a similar design but changed a few things like details and maybe the layout. In conclusion, I can always get better and improve my skills in art, but for the first project that i’ve done in a while, I don’t think I did half bad.