ADVANCED DRAWING: Symbolic Self Portrait

Symbolic Self Portrait

by Tram Dang

For my symbolic self portrait, I had a couple of ideas I wanted to do for it. I knew that I wanted to do more physical representation of myself rather than objects that were symbolic to me. For me, I love and hate to do self portraits because I get fixated if I cannot draw myself proportionately or if something looks off, I will spend hours fixing it till it rights before I go in with color. However, I enjoy being able to look back at my previous self portraits and seeing how different stylistic it is and how I have grown and evolve as an artist.

This assignment allowed me to get in the mindset of creating art and was very relaxing and experimental in using colors, stroke and movement. I wanted to represent my accurate self on my worst and best days. I decided to create a triptych in color pencil. For me, if I wasn't going to an event or celebrating something, I would dress in my most comfiest clothes (like many) and don't really care what everyone else think. My first piece, I'm Ded, I decided to depict myself sleeping with my neck pillow. Usually when I am really pressed for time (or dare I say procrastinating on homework and such), I would usually sit on my chair and in order for me to assure that I would wake up, I would sleep on my chair so that if I did fall asleep, I would be able to wake up and finish my homework. I realized that if I tried to nap laying on my bed, I will knock out complete and won't be able to wake up. I know its really bad and super uncomfortable but at least I have my trusty neck pillow to support me in these desperate times of need. I also decided that I wanted to keep the tones very dull and sketch like to kind of emanate this desperate, fast pace nature.

My second piece, Feeling Myself, is another portrait of me on my best day. My hair was washed and brushed, I wore very minimal makeup since I still don't really know how to apply makeup and kinda just wing it (a philosophy I live by). For this piece, I wanted to juxtapose my worse self, so I colored everything and made sure that it was very colorful. Unlike I'm Ded, I added multiple colors throughout the piece, in my hair and jacket, to give a more vibrant feel.

I wanted to keep my face very limited to color and wanted a more stylistic feel. I added either a light peach or peach color to give myself more dimension and differentiate between different parts of my body. I believe its a work in process and I haven't truly gotten a hold of how to do it yet. I also gave every piece a sketchy color background and incorporate similar colors throughout each work so that it would connect as a series. In I'm Ded, I kept the dull tones in the background however added a dark, grey purple however kept it really limited. But in Feeling Myself, I used bright shades of blues to push my portrait in the foreground and incorporate purple on the right side.

My third piece, Vibes, it the largest of the three and is the in-between I try to strive for on a daily basis. It is not one of the extremes and therefore has a different background than the other two. For this one, I picked a photo that encapsulate me. I am wearing a hat, sweatshirt and glasses (courtsey of Snapchat). The background is very liquid and colorful to kind of show my creative juices and is an artistic style that can be seen in my previous works.

P.S. these titles are working title and are subject to change (also open to suggestions).

Tram Dang, Alice in Wonderland, 2016.

Tram Dang, untitled (watermarks), 2016

Some of my inspiration/ mood board that inspired me for this piece are listed below. I like to put all my images that I want to incorporate in my work or derive on google slide and as I am drawing or painting, I will be staring at it to help gather my thoughts. These were some images I found from a quick google search I did and stuff I find as I was searching the interwebs.