Artist Statement

My question: “Who shapes our beliefs and influences our values?” has been the guiding prompt for my portraits. Throughout the year, I have been working in colored pencil and a few other mediums to create portraits of the people who inspire me. Each colored pencil piece takes me 6-12 hours to complete. As the year progressed, I have developed and revised my colored pencil techniques. By practicing blending skills, proportions, shading, color picking, and color mixing I have created a portfolio of work that both honors the people I admire and meets my artistic standards. I have also been experimenting in different mediums as well. I have worked in linocut, charcoal, pencil, and oil paints. In my piece “wavey davey on fire”, I found a shading technique and blending method that increased the depth of color in my piece. My portraits mostly pay tribute to important musicians in my life but also connect to people in my family.