This piece was inspired by my journey with self love and finding myself through that. I wanted to depict me as I am headed to embrace myself with my arms, leaving my shoulders and body to make a heart shape that I decided to outline in red ink. I wanted to outline this in red ink to send the clear message that I was trying to depict my embrace with a heart shape and also allow me to add emphasis to the key interpretive aspects of my portrait; my arms, the banner, the words, and the rose that I am holding. The rose symbolizes loving yourself through your imperfections, as it is seen losing a petal. My arms symbolize being kind to yourself and showing yourself love in order to grow. The words and pretty self explanatory and the banner shows that is something I am proud to be taking part in and want to encourage others to take part in this “club” as well, almost advertising it to them. I decided not to include a face on this drawing of myself because I liked the simplicity of the three key aspects of my drawing that I highlighted in red and didn’t want to take away from that or add more complex dimensions. In this piece I used graphite, charcoal, and red ink. Total time: 2 hours 45 mins.
