In this blog post I will talk about two contrasting self portraits that I created using Adobe Illustrator.
First Self Portrait
For the first self portrait I have used Adobe Illustrator to create a simple replication of myself, it is based off a photo that was taken at a Thai restaurant my boyfriend and I visited before seeing my favourite band, music and food are two of the things that I enjoy in life most. Through the illustration I have tried to capture my happiness. The colourful lights in the background represent my joy in this moment, they also assist in showing my fun, bright and light-hearted personality. Through creating this self portrait, I have realised that throughout my future in design I would like to bring others joy and relief from the stresses of the world. Although it is important to spread word about important worldwide issues, when looking at other creatives designs playfulness and fun is what I am drawn to most.
For the second Adobe Illustrator self-portrait I created an abstract piece, I focused on the features of my face that stand out to me the most when looking in the mirror. The large ovals around my eyes represent my tired dark circles, the patches represent the shadows and highlights of lighting due to my face shape and the mouth is wonky to replicate my wonky mouth when smiling. These stand out to me as flaws however through this design they have become fun, colourful and are the key to this design being interesting. Gogol (2019) makes the point that it is common for artists to create self-portraits throughout the ageing process. The background has a psychedelic feel which represents both my sometimes-chaotic brain and one of my top played music genres, psychedelic rock. In the future, I want to continue using bright colours and would like to create designs that connect to music.
References
Gogol, M. (2019) Aging displayed in self-portraits of artists. Innovation in Aging, 3, 180.