For my 131 class in the Core program at Iowa State University at the College of Design, we had to make a self-portrait in soft pastels. This was the very first ever self-portrait that I have ever made leading up to that point.
Exactly a year later, I revisited the idea of creating a self-portrait in my newly developed style and newly found love of colored pencils. I was fascinated by the idea of the depiction of the LGBTQIA++ Community as religious iconography. This was an opportunity to look at what we define as god-like and what it means to be a part of that community and our depiction in the media
For my yearly self portrait I was incredibly manic and drew myself as a god with with a purple diadem that I never finished and never will. I was diagnosed with bipolar shortly after creating the self portrait, the medication that I was proscribed stamped on and crushed all my creativity and drawing was immensely hard and I could barely draw a frog. I thought I lost it all, everything I worked so hard to accomplish, gone. So I asked my professor for my final to do another self portrait, and created something still having the religious iconography but with more meaning. I took an image of what I was envisioning, My bipolar behind me deified, as it deified itself, making me perceive myself as a god. I show my thumb and I am looking towards the future as the skies start a new as if morning light just broke through and I have a a new day ahead of me.
It is not refined as much because I had to teach myself how to draw again from the ground up.
This piece is my year four self portrait that I made called bloom to show the growth that i made over the years.
This is the biggest color pencil drawing that I have ever made with it being 24 x 36 inches. It shows the difference between growth and suffering that I face day in and day out and how I have grown as a person and individual but still suffer from my disorder.