First attempt at a vector portrait. This was created by lowering the opacity of a photo of myself and going over it with distinct shapes using the wide variety of shape and curvature tools in illustrator. I have decided to make my portrait look unsettling and uninterested to create a juxtaposition since typically unsettling imagery would cause some sort of alarm or emotional response. The piece contains no shading, blur nor gradient of any kind, so every single detail stands out due to being in strategic locations where it is placed next to other colours which contrast it enough for them both to stand out alongside each other. The spiders are an edited photograph that I took, the background looked plain so I have decided to make a halo of spiders to add to the piece being unsettling and add onto the juxtaposition since spiders typically get a reaction out of people due to how common arachnophobia is.
This is an inspirational piece based on translated lyrics. “Keep writing even when all readers are dead” was a quote I personally found very inspirational, which means that even when nobody is watching and even if you have no supporters nor audience, you have to carry on and keep to your routine. The piece was an adjusted picture of me with a filter over it and refied by covering up unappealing spots and pixels leftover from the rough rendering of the filter. The writing was originally in black however it was incredibly difficult to see and setting it to white has only made it distract too much from the photo itself, so my solution was to carefully colour pick from the photograph and arrange them in such a way in which they are easy to read when contrasting to their background whilst still looking natural in the piece and not taking away from the entire piece.