self portrait

This portrait is born out of a lack of proper tools. I originally intended to use photoshop to manipulate some digital photos of myself....but the photos came out SO blurred I could barely see myself. But I didn't give up! I just realized that I couldn't use the images directly...I'd have to draw new portraits using the images as guides. But...I didn't have my wacom tablet, and I was using a really wierd mouse with which I couldn't draw a straight line...so I made myself a "sloppy" portrait using lots of colors and 1 brush size. I had to pretend that sloppiness was intended since there was no avoiding it and my lines were going all over the place! Then I used some noise, pixelation and watercolor filters to mess it up more. Then I brought it into Illustrator and penned out color blocks from what was left of the previous image...and that's what you see.

The colors of the world are coming together to make me...and my outward self is putting on a false smile while my inner self watches broodingly.



(sorry if the image is kind of big, I'm posting it here so that I can download it and print it out somewhere else )