Response:

The central question that guided my sustained investigation was "How can I combine literal and abstract elements of the human body to expose more than just the physical inner workings of people?" My goal was to create self-portraits that were more than skin-deep that exposed the inner workings of the mind through the visual elements in the artwork. The idea was to bring out the elements of the mind visually, so they too can be seen. Throughout my sustained investigation, I used many different techniques and experimented with materials and processes ranging from graphite to charcoal to colored pencil to pastel to digital graphic design. Each design was extremely iterative, as is made especially evident in the SI slides that illustrate the progress of certain works. For example, SI 9 shows my experimentation with various approaches to graphic design. I experimented with various color schemes, levels of detail, textures, and gradients until I made SI 10. With each artwork, I attempted to take a unique approach to handling the portrait. Some are literal self-portraits, while others contain far more abstract depictions of myself, using my hands and brain as symbols for my emotions.