Closer Look
My final identity artwork, ‘Closer Look’, explores the identity of a new person who has recently entered my life. For privacy sakes I’ll refer to him as Pam (a nickname). This artwork consists of four different pieces, all showing different aspects of his personality.
The most obvious element found in ‘Closer Look’ is colour. The main drawing is supposed to show my first impression of him, dull, not interesting, monotoned. While the little side drawings show what he’s actually like. Blacks and whites were used for the main one while lots of different colours were used for the other three little ones. I used three techniques, watercolour, digital and pencil drawing. I drew my digital drawing on an app called procreate while the rest was drawn with watercolours and a lead pencil. The main artists that inspired me while creating this artwork were William Kentridge and several Instagram artists (Sushush and Ijustwannahavfunn). This piece is full of emotion, that slowly changes as the eyes of the viewer trail through the artwork. It starts with disappointment and curiousness then it slowly turns into amusement and content as his true personality is revealed.
My goal was to recreate my first impression of Pam’s identity. I believe I was successfully able to recreate this as the piece takes the viewer on a journey, the exact journey that I took and was intending to recreate from the start. After creating this artwork, I learnt that while charcoal looks amazing, I will not be using on a regular basis! It’s too messy and smudges too easily.
The final piece wasn’t all that I had imagined. I thought I’d have more drawings around the main one and that the main drawing was going to look better. I thought the main drawing was going to look more like him even though it was just a silhouetted/ outlined version of him. Future artists may like the way I used William Kentridge’s style mixed with my own or how I made little clip art drawings the put around one of my little drawings. In the end I’m just glad that Pam’s identity was successfully captured in ‘Closer Look’.
