This is the final project I did for my drawing class in the spring of 2025. The assignment for it was to create a series of drawings with an overall theme that connects them all together as one piece. The theme that I chose was my struggle with conforming to expectations within art and my passion to develop my own artstyle and path as an artist.
Development
In short, the themes originated from when I began drifting away from my usual drawing style for a more realistic drawing style for the sake of my art classes. I had a style that was very based on comics, graphic novels, cartoons, and anime/manga because not only do I enjoy that medium, but also because that is what I saw myself most likely doing in the future. Therefore, I developed a very vestille and cartoon-like style that could fit into any genre and work for any demographic whether it is for children or adults or even girls or boys because it was a big deal for me growing up with the demographic binary being for a certain age or gender and fitting in almost perfectly. It was something that I did not enjoy because I felt that a story should be enjoyed by anyone and feel appealing for anyone especially regardless of gender, so I pushed for an art style that could be appreciated and enjoyed by the many.
However, this was not the style that many of my art teachers in college prefer and gently edged me into doing a more realistic style. It was a style that I did not thoroughly enjoy because I ended up trading my usually exaggerated style for something I found a little too lifeless, something that was more focused on recreating something exactly rather than focused on emotions, which I was used to doing. With the addition of homework, I felt like I did not get enough time over the past fews years developing my style, and I had slowly lost the joy of simply creating something. So, doing a new project in my own style is very uplifting. Although, it has been difficult because I have been transitioning to computer format, so going back to traditional tools has been interesting.
I originally came up with the idea from a different project when I considered doing a realistic self-portrait of me paired with another self-portrait in my artstyle, but decided to save it for my final project. So, what I did for my final project is that I did a series of five drawings starring my self-portrait drawn in the realistic style and several of my original characters I created throughout my highschool and college years done in my personal style.
To add a sense of unity and cohesion, I put my self-portrait and a different set of characters seemingly in the same scene together with my self-portrait appearing to not notice the current set of characters. For example, I featured myself in a forest scene sort of lounging about while the current set of characters are lounging about in a different space within the scene. Basically, me not noticing my own characters is supposed to represent their fictionality and create the sense if they are actually co-existing or if they are only figments of my imagination. Thus, it becomes a theme that connects them all together with me in the realistic style and my characters in my own style.