ADVANCED DRAWING: Alter Ego Project

For this project, I struggled a bit with what an alter ego even was. At first, I thought it would simply be the opposite version of myself, but upon further research I began to realize it actually represents a different side of myself. When one refers to an alter ego, I feel they typically refer to an ideal version of one’s self. But for this project, I wanted to convey my negative alter ego.

Outwardly and in public, I tend to keep myself emotionally put together and calm. Only a few of my closest friends have seen me completely fall into fits of depression and stress. To combat this lately though, I’ve been meditating daily (well, more or less daily). It should be noted I am not spiritual or religious in any sense and typically believe things such as meditation to be a bit of a hoax. After on and off meditating for the past four months or so, I can confidently say it’s been the most clear minded I’ve been in the past three years or so. I don’t know if it’s changing situations, meditating, or a combination of both, but I knew I wanted to illustrate this new piece of mind I have for this project.

After researching some images of meditation, I came across many floating images that were reminiscent of Buddha. After seeing all the floating meditators, I decided I wanted to make this a vertical piece where the mediator is floating above the contrasting image of someone literally drowning in stress. I believe some of my inspiration for my stressed, drowning self-came from Viviana’s previous piece where she showed herself drowning in her hair.

To further push the contrast between a calm self and a stressed self, I wanted to utilize color. Therefore, I did some research on the psychology of different colors and came to the conclusion of blue representing serenity and red and black representing chaos in the mind. To emphasize the mediator’s serenity, I gave her a yellow halo reminiscent of the Buddha statues and a mediation technique called “visualization.” For this meditation exercise, we are told to visualize sunshine being poured into our body from the top of our head and filling us up with a calm feeling and melting away all of our worries. This is the type of feeling I wanted to convey with my mediator image. For the color of the chaotic alter ego, I decided to use black and white to depict dreariness and pops of red and scribble like strands of hair to depict chaos.

To connect the two I decided to use the hair to convey the idea of control – similar to a puppet and puppeteer. The meditator is shown to be the one in control (the puppeteer), while on the other hand, the girl drowning in her hair down below is out of control (the puppet). In the past, I felt as if my daily goal was to find those moments where I could embody the essence of the mediator but recently, my struggle has been to stay in control and not letting my stressed and depressed self pull me down.