My piece; "Sleepwalking" is inspired by some of Vincent Van Gogh's paintings, but more specifically his overall painting style, such as his brushstrokes. I incorporated Van Gogh's brush strokes and rhythm into my second half of my illustration (right) to represent the "restless" and "compulsive" look to express the more severe side of depression, (break downs, burn-outs, etc.) The other half of my illustration, (left) is more contrasting to it's other half to really amplify the other emotion of depression after a break down, burn out, etc. I tried to represent more of a "empty" type feeling by making it very tired. For the face overall, I wanted it to seem very exhausted. I used a small portion of light shades of pink and red to represent a tired but really sore eye after crying. "Sleepwalking" is meant to present depression, and the surreal feeling I get when I first wake up, can't believing I'm still alive. Throughout the day, I feel like I'm "sleepwalking." I'm here but my mind isn't here.
Inspirations:
Vincent Van Gogh I chose Vincent Van Gogh as one of my inspirations for my piece, primarily because I really love the way he brushstrokes are, especially in his self portraits such as, "Self Portrait with a Straw Hat" 1887 and his other self portrait, "Self Portrait" 1889. I chose these because in this specific paintings, Vincent Van Gogh tends to use very precise small lines throughout his painting. It looks very restless, and compulsive. It also have a very similar rhythm to his "Starry Night" painting. Using this would really help me convey the message of depression, since depression feels very chaotic and extremely mentally draining.
"Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat" 1887
"Self Portrait" 1887
Pablo Picasso "Crouching Woman" by Pablo Picasso is from 1902. I chose this painting as another inspiration since I knew I really wanted myself in a crouching position, I just wasn't sure of how I should go about it. In this painting, I feel as though it sincerely depicts the state of depression due to her crouching, fetal position and the different shades of blues and blacks in the background.
"Crouching Woman" 1902
Andre Derain
Andre Derain was my second source of inspiration for the right side of my half illustration project. I chose Derain because his lines and restless movement is highly similar to Vincent Van Gogh's line movement and art style as well. I wanted to really use this in my second half of my illustration because the little lines and dots both inspirations use create a really lively affect. Since, in my illustration I am trying to represent these "waves" of emotions inside of me building up, the only way to do this was by using Andre Derain's art style as well, to really bring movement alive inside me and make it seem like these "waves" inside me as well.
(Right Half Inspiration) M.C. Escher - "Eye" Mauritis Cornelis Escher was a Dutch graphic artist who would make woodcuts, lithographs and even mezzotints. Escher was extremely neglected by the art world, not much of his arts were known. I chose to use M.C. Escher's highly detailed painting during surrealism which is the; "Eye 1946" I chose to use this as a source of my inspiration because I extremely love how he drew the eyes so realistically. He drew this because it's actually his own eye, he drew it while studying it through a convex shaving mirror, which greatly enlarged it. However, his pupil isn't visible, his gaze is met with death.
Sketches and Planning
Beginning my planning for my illustration (left) , I knew that I wanted to draw myself in a more crouching, covered position. Reason for this is because usually when I'm mentally drained I tend to put myself into a fetal position. I didn't know exactly how I wanted my position to be though. I didn't know if I wanted myself laying down, or sitting down. In the end, after finishing some rough sketches of some possible poses, I got advice from some friends and they suggested I should do more of a sitting down, crouched/covered position instead of the laying down, fetal position. I decided that was the best position as well, so I did the position in the right lower corner as my final pose.
Right
Left
Right (Second Half)
For the second half of my illustration, I began by sketching out the plan of a girl laying on her side. The focus I wanted on this sketch were the eyes, I wanted the eyes of the girl to really tell the story of how she's feeling internally, plus all of her facial aspects as well. I chose eyes because our eyes hold a lot of information about us and they are the ones who can really convey what we are feeling inside when we have no words to explain just exactly how we feel inside. When doing this, I resorted back to my main inspiration for how I could do the eyes very detailed like; M,C. Escher. When I finally knew how I wanted this to look, I began by sketching out a girl laying on her side and went ahead with the my first rough draft sketch since I felt it really captured the "tired" and "depressed" expression I was mainly going for.
Process:
Left: For my 1/2 illustration of me in a crouching position, I decided to really incorporate some of Andre Derain's line strokes, and some of Pablo Picasso's Line strokes as well. I began by using my Prisma Color Pencils and sort of using multiple colors to create a very vibrate attraction towards the body of me. I began by sort of creating this 'flow' rhythm and creating movement for the 'skin' of my body. I wanted to create this restless movement in my body to represent the rush and "waves" of emotions that take me over when I get into theses really depressive phases and the feeling of unsettlement that tends to linger afterwords. The color use changes throughout my body, it goes from vibrant bright multiple colors, to really darker tones and shades of browns, blacks, blues, to suddenly a deep vibrant red. The more variety of colors is meant to represent the joy and happiness I once had that is eventually being overtaken by feelings of sadness and anger which represents the change in color.
Right: Beginning with the eye, I had to firstly start out by sketching what exactly my eye looked like from a picture I had taken of my eye. After doing so, I kept referring back to M.C. Escher's "Eye" drawing and noticed how for his drawing, in order to make it realistic I needed to really highlight the areas of my eye that have highlights and then highlight the other areas of my eye that are darker and have darker shades. I also needed to keep in mind the creases he had included in his eye drawing as well. In his drawing, there's a lot of intricate detail that I really needed to keep in mind in order to make my eye look like his as well, the style of how exactly he did his eye. When I started doing mine, I paid close attention to any creases I had around my eye and any highlights I might have had as well depending on the lighting. I also needed to make my eye lashes much longer than his since I have longer and even thicker eye lashes as well.
Critique:
Similarities: Some similiarities between both my illustration pieces and between Andre Derain and Van Gogh is the overall brush strokes and the style. With my illustrations I needed to incorporate their style of art, I couldn't really incorporate the same meanings because they are highly different but overall I knew that they needed the same motion, and the restless movement of little lines instead of full on coloring and shading. Differences: Some differences between my illustration and between my inspirations is the initial meanings. The meanings behind Andre Derain and Van Gogh are highly different from my meanings behind my illustrations. My illustrations both convey the deeper feelings of depression and Derain & Van Gogh are more about other topics that aren't too deep as my topic.
Reflection:
Overall, doing this illustration project was very enjoyable and actually a very new experience for me as well. We had the option to use paint or colored pencils. I really wanted to use colored pencils, so I decided to order myself some Prisma Colored Pencils. This was my very first time using these type of colored pencils and I feel as though they really worked so amazingly well. They are highly different from the usual Crayola colored pencils but much better overall too. I really enjoyed experimenting with these colored pencils and actually blending together lots of the colors too, the blending part was fairly easy and very satisfying to see as well. Doing my illustrations were fairly difficult. I wasn't sure of how to approach this and actually do it well enough to bring out the message of depression and the overwhelming waves of feelings and emotion of it and also the after affect of the "numb" and "empty" feeling I usually feel as well. I noticed while working on this illustration that it's kind of difficult for to present the emotion of "emptiness' and "numbness" it was very challenging to do the second half of my illustration piece.
ACT Connections:
1) Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork? Although my illustration doesn't have the same meaning as my inspirations do, the effect of their art style and their motion of lines and patterns are very evident in my illustration.
2) What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration? I feel as though the inspirations and "authors" regarding the topic of my inspiration would somewhat like my illustration since our topics of art aren't fairly similar but the overall art style and strokes of rhythm and motion are similar.
3) What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration? When looking for my inspirations, I realized that many of the art works I found that were mainly based around depression kind of represented it in a more crazy type of way, like having depression makes you crazy? It really upset me to see that and it made it hard for me to find some inspiration due to that..
4) What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research? It's overall about depression and that "empty" feeling I feel after waking up in the morning. The other half of my illustration is supposed to be mainly about the more intense and chaotic feelings of depression that make me feel really manic when I have those episodes.
5) What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research? I inferred that while researching for some inspirations that most of the inspirations I would find would be mostly paintings which differs because my illustration is use with more of Prisma Color Pencils.
MLA Citations
André Derain paintings, Bio, ideas. The Art Story. (n.d.). Retrieved March 8, 2023, from https://www.theartstory.org/artist/derain-andre/
Encyclopedia Britannica, inc. (2023, February 9). Vincent van Gogh. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved March 8, 2023, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Vincent-van-Gogh
Encyclopedia Britannica, inc. (n.d.). Pablo Picasso Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved March 8, 2023, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pablo-picasso
M.C. Escher – the official website. (n.d.). Retrieved March 8, 2023, from https://mcescher.com/