Artist Statement

Jy’Aire O’Connor

For this quarter of Art we made a small self portrait the represents us either metaphorically, head on, or distinctly. My art was somewhat of a metaphor not mentioning or showing anything about me in it’s entirety. My self portrait  included one of kanye's album mascots Dropout Bear, a squid, a rainbow fish, a treasure chest, Rick (From Rick and Morty) as the sun, and outer space. For this creation I used Oil pastels, a pencil, color pencils, pen, sharpie, and crayons. I wanted my Self Portrait to be somewhat dry and not too shiny this is why I chose these tools . My portrait consist of many colors because I wanted it to be vibrant.

This portrait represents my life and my future choices. In my creation the sky and the ocean kind of collide because my thoughts on both are conflicting. I can’t choose between studying astronomy or marine biology when I get to college. For the Kanye West Dropout Bear I chose him because the character itself is ironic. It’s called Dropout Bear yet he graduated high school and earned his Bachelor's degree. Although I joke about dropping out or feel as though I want to I always persevere and pull through when times get hard. Rick being the sun shows how much the show and science influences me. The squid, fish, and treasure chest kind of point out my love for marine life and the perks that come from studying them.

I Am more of a visual learner so while drawing I pulled up images of the things you see in my self portrait and drew them. While doing the outlines of the object I made sure to make it poke out which is why I used the sharpie. I then had to rearrange the initial positioning of the objects to create as little space there was. When done with that I colored in the self portrait giving the objects distinct colors making sure no object mimicked the other. I smudged the oil pastel to fill in any missing spots. An artist that inspired me is Vincent van Gogh. His art is very abstract and he’s known for using oil tools to paint. One of my favorite pieces of art from him is “The Starry Night”.

If I could change one thing it’d be to add more patterns in my art like Vincent van Gogh. Just like swirls or zig zags. I hope to get better with oil tools and get close to his way of art.

All in all I feel as though this project went really well. I learned a lot while doing this such as the different type of utensils as well as multiple ways you can use them. I also learned that I have a little bit of artist in me. I was actually proud of my art it looked great! I also learned that something so basic could come out so complicated or be considered abstract art when lots of time is put in.  I hope to use my experience now for projects later on in the future. I can’t wait to do more projects close or similar to this one and see the improvements.

My art takes a very simplistic to my life. Overall very blunt and not ambiguous. I decided to draw a smiley face (because I’m a happy child) around four things that mean a lot to me. The first thing I added was a playstation controller. I added this because I grew up using playstation consoles. The second thing is uno cards. This is symbolic because it represents the time I spend with my friends and how we bond.I also drew food because I really like food. When I created this project I really wanted to convey my simplistic life and how I value little things.I created this project using the most basic materials. I used your average pencil for drawing and coloring pencils for well, coloring.This is to further convey the simpleness of my art style. I tried my best to merge the colors in the background to have a spacey feel to it.

I would say my friend young gravity inspired this art piece. She makes a lot of space kind of artwork and I really wanted to try out this approach. Blending colors is a very important technique in this artwork. I think so because the background is space so it being monochrome is pretty lame so blending colors would make it good looking.I most proud of finishing this project I feel like I could’ve improved on a lot. I think i should make my color blending better.In conclusion, SPACE.   

My artwork contains a faded green hill on the right hand side of the paper and it overlaps the darker green hill on the left hand side of the paper. Above the hills is a reddish purple color for the sky and then there are three clouds. They are outlined in black and are colored with purple and blue for a blended look. Coming out of the cloud on the right there is a head with their brain exposed. The brain is the same color as the lower portion of the sky and the person is looking at the grey moon and the yellow stars in the sky. The sky above is a light red that is fading out. I want my work to communicate my hope that I had to visit space. The person is coming out of the clouds because their head is in the clouds making it a dream like state. Which is why the sky is red when the moon and stars are out. It is not reality.

To make this artwork I used colored pencils, a black sharpie and pastels. I used the black sharpie to outline everything and the colored pencils and pastels to color in everything else. To make this work I drew the picture on the canvas and started off using colored pencils to color the clouds and then I realized there were pastels. I began to use the pastels for everything and blended them with my finger. One technique I used was blending with my finger and it really helped bring everything together. I am most proud of the clouds in my work. One thing I would change is the outline of everything in black. I learned that pastels aren’t as easy as they seem to use.