Our prompt for our visual journal covers this year was "Intersectionality". One of the many ways intersectionality can be interpreted was the connection of body, mind and spirit. I decided to draw what I believe my own body, mind and soul connection would look like if personified. I also wanted to represent how my spirit sometimes an be downhearted in life and how my mind can cause stress for me. For my front cover, I thought the best way to show my spirit was to use a new art style I experimented with a lot over quarantine. There is no name for it but this is what it looks like:
You can find the full images in the Portfolio, Quarantine Art section.
To create the images above, I started by sketching in the portrait of the person with pencil then using highlighters and markers to patch in areas of colors, fit to the facial structure of the person. I used this art style on the front side of my journal. For the back side of my journal, I wanted to go more into how my mind can cause stress, affecting my body and spirit.
First I planned out how I wanted it too look:
On this page, I organized my ideas for my cover. I rough sketched how I wanted my front cover to look like in the bottom left corner. Using the art style I showed above, I wanted to do a self portrait of myself as a personified vision of the intersection of my own mind, body and spirit. It is not shown on the page, but I knew I wanted the colors used in the portrait to be very bright and vibrant because I see my soul as that when I envision it. To show how my spirit can fall as a result of my mind, i decided to place squares in different areas of my cover. The squares would also add an element of intersecting in a visual term. For the back cover I knew I wanted to show how my mind can cause stress for me. The main way in which this shows is my social anxiety. I sketched my idea for the back cover in the bottom right corner. I wanted to show a crowd of people all black and white and me in the middle, in color, because these scenarios in real life can be very stressful for me in my mind and can damage my spirit.
On this page I did a rough draft and the front and back cover. I used this page to sketch what colors I wanted where and how the covers would look colored. For the front cover, I used a lot of bright colors to represent how I see my own spirit. The hair on this page is painted white but I knew that on the actually cover I wanted the hair to be white, since the background in black and it would contrast better. The squares have the same elements of the face, the same placement of the different colors, but they are done in black and white. To represent how my spirit can be more downhearted by using colors that are less bright and more muted. This also provides an element of intersetionality in a visual sense. I decided in the squares to not draw the hair so that is more focused on my spirit, the face, and less on the body, which the hair ties into more. For the back cover, I sketched of smaller version of the crowd that would be painted on the back. I used muted colors of grey and black, some mixed with primary colors to create more range of color. The colorful one in the middle represents me and my spirit. I used the same colors used in the front cover to create a connection between the front and the back. I wanted the back cover to create the feeling of being lost in the crowd.
Finished Product:
Artist Statement:
The front cover is my personified representation of the intersection of my body, mind and soul. It has a facial structure that is similar to my own face. my face is filled with sections of bright and varied colors, representing my cheery and joyful spirit. The sections of black and white show a different side of my spirit, a downhearted version. The side of my spirit that shows in stressful or sad situations in my life. I used shades of grey and muted colors, primary colors mixed with black, to show the overall mood of the downhearted side of my spirit which contrasts against the more bright side of my spirit. The contrast of colors also shows the intersection of my spirit and mind because my mind is what influences my spirit. The different sides of spirit show depending on what is going on in my mind and my life. For example, if my mind is stressed the more dampened side of my spirit takes over.
The back cover depicts a scenario where my mind is triggering the more downhearted side of my spirit. Crowds when I'm alone can be very stressful situations for me because of my social anxiety. I drew the crowd in shades of grey and muted colors and myself (in the middle) in more brights colors. Looking back at it now, I wish I would've flipped that, the crowd being colorful and me being the opposite because that would get my point across better. It would show more of how my spirit is more downhearted in a stressful situation like that with shades of muted grays.The crowd being more colorful would show that their spirits aren't affected by this and they are carefree and happy, creating contrast from mine. This is a mistake I will fix later.
Comments