Inside Out - Day Project

First day in our specialised subject!! - for me, Illustration! Lots of new people to meet and it was rather scary! To get us to start talking to people we were given the brief to create 3 portraits using random objects ranging from buttons, shells and pine cones to light bulbs, wooden toy horses and golden syrup tins - a self portrait and then the portraits of the two other people on your table. We began by asking each other questions to start and work out what we were all like and how to put this across in our portraits.

These were my self portraits. I always find self portraits difficult because they're so personal. I decided to base my portrait on how I was feeling that day - which was very nervous although trying to keep up a brave face!

Following are my portraits for Lucy, who is a very friendly, funny person in a quiet sort of way so I was trying to get that across but she's also very clever and witty so I wanted to be able to portray her intelligence as well.  

I felt that this portrait seemed too serious and didn't get the idea of Lucy's kind and friendly personality. However, I did like the simplicity of the piece because I feel like Lucy is quite a calm, together person. 

This portrait definitely captured Lucy's friendliness more but I felt that it was too cluttered as a piece with the buttons and the rest on the left side. However I did want to include some of these objects because to me the symbolise Lucy's clever, witty side. 

I simplified the piece keeping what I believed to be the most important elements. 

This was originally my final piece but I think I actually prefer the one above more now looking back at them all together. The one above seems to have more balance and just seems to be more appealing to the eye.

And last, but not least, there are the portraits of Megan. I based Megan's portrait more on her physical attributes because I didn't know her as well as Lucy. Megan has an impressive amount of piercings in her ears and nose so I tried to use a lot of metal objects to represent that. She also wore a lot of black eye liner which I tired to capture as well. However, She loves Disney and magical creatures (like unicorns) so I tried to show that she has an interesting mind and has a love of music in my pieces too.   

It was interesting trying to think of which object best represented certain aspects of a person's character; I liked that it made me think about what I wanted to express about someone's personality but I also found it quite difficult because the audience might interpret the objects differently and so not get what I was trying to say about the person. But I supposed that's a problem you'll get with any piece of art! I did enjoy it though because it shows you don't just have to draw in illustration!