Self Portrait

For our final 2D project, we were assigned a self-portrait. In elementary art class, we would cover a mirror with tracing paper and draw our reflections in paint, oil pastels, and colored pencils. However, now that I am in college and in a class with people who all hope to end up somewhere in the art/design world, my days of drawing my reflection like that were over. Throghout the semester, I would constantly proclaim my love for glitter. When stumped with what to do for this project, I kept resorting back to glitter. My teacher would tell the class that if there was something that we really loved to just do it. So do it I did.

On Saturday, my friend Sarah and I gathered our supplies and headed to the art building to start. Originally planning to cover my face in frosting and then arrange pink and blue sprinkles on the top, we had to adjust when the frosting began to melt from my body temperature. As my teacher constantly promoted, YES paste worked the best as a baste and then on top we painted a fabulous, iridescent, confetti glitter that worked wondrously.

Here are how they turned out:

My whole idea behind it, besides my love for glitter was that I wanted to finally just try and do something because I wanted to do it and test it out, instead of just trying to make something that I thought would award me a grade that I wanted. Instead, I decided to take a risk. The glitter on my face and palm was for just something that I loved, and my finger-tips are covered in pink sprinkles because it looks like glitter, but was a way that I was able to incorporate another activity that I love; baking. When finished, I used Illustrator and wrote down words that describe my anxiousness when it comes to figuring out what I want to do a project on, and how people will react and how the picture is fun and positive and the words show my anxiousness and fears.

Overall, I think that it was a really successful project, and in critique I even got a nod from my classmates and teacher. Turns out you can actually do something you love, take a risk, and get praise for it as well.

Thank you Sarah for the help with the pictures.