Adobe Illustrator Self Portrait

For my first self portrait that I made on Illustrator I decided to reference a photo of me when I was younger as it includes many elements that shaped who I was then and things that I still love and care about to this day. One of the main aspects being the countryside location where I grew up and spent a lot of time taking walks and spending time with my family. I enjoyed going outside and seeing the views which is still something I like to do so I though this image would be appropriate as well as the fact I also love the colour pink and I’m wearing my favourite pink coat and headband in this photo. As a designer I also love incorporating muted greens and browns which are colours that feature a lot here in the background and the clothing I’m wearing. This photo especially was one I saw often as it was printed and put on my fridge so I’d see it most days and one which I look back on fondly nowadays with nostalgia.

For the style of this self-portrait I tried to make my face and clothes quite detailed to reflect my clear memories I have of this time as well as using desaturated colours to make the photo seem older/frayed and more nostalgic. To try and make this more detailed and look more accurate to the original reference I tried to use lots of different shades in various shapes in order to make the contrast more intense, especially in the hair to give it more depth and make it look more windswept. On the other hand I made the background look very simple as to not take away from the main part of the photo but still make it clear that the photo was taken outside.

For my second self-portrait I used a more recent photo of myself in comparison to the first illustration as I wanted to see what it’d be like to draw my different features from when I was young to how I look now. For example, my hair is now black and I have more piercings so I wanted to show the difference by doing two portraits at different stages in my life. Similarly to the first one the light source is hitting the side of my face in both of them, so in this one I tried to focus more on making it look more subtle and less harsh by using a less wide range of colours in my face. I also wanted to choose a photo where my expression doesn’t create as many lines in my face to further experiment with different techniques used to create the human face. One of my favourite things to do in my past time is listen to music, especially in the car so I decided to use an image which demonstrates that.

One big aspect I developed from my first self-portrait to my second is the use of colour and how the tones have become a lot more warm and saturated in my second which I’ve chosen to do to reflect how it’s a much more recent picture and my memories of that day are much clearer. I still wanted to reference my childhood in this portrait so outside the car in the background I drew a child-like illustration landscape which I drew everywhere when I was younger and being introduced to different art materials.