ADVANCED DRAWING: Alter Ego

Ali Sykes

ART 318-Advanced Drawing

Alter Ego Blog Post

This project immediately stressed me out and caused me to have somewhat of a mini identity crisis. I spent countless class periods and late nights and showers thinking about ideas for this project. I simply could not figure out what, or who, my alter ego was. This project really made me think about who I am in order to think about who I am not, and that was a bit scary to think about. I feel like, in a way, my everyday self that I present to the world perhaps is my alter ego. This thought did not help my mini identity crisis.

As I began researching alter ego artwork avidly over the course of a week, hoping to be hit with inspiration as to what my alter ego is, I realized more and more that looking at depictions of other people’s alter egos in artwork could not help me. Someone else is not me, and I could not relate to their work, nor could it help me answer the question of who my alter ego is. Through my initial research, though, I did come across two pieces depicting alter egos that I found rather interesting and inspiring. The first is Marion Elizabeth Adnam’s, “Alter Ego,” which shows a paper-like woman next to a skeleton of a large bird. Even though both figures are very different, the title of the piece makes it apparent that one of the figures is the alter ego of the other. The second piece I was drawn to is Jaime Adrover’s “Alter Ego,” which shows a raw and seedy depiction of a man holding a bottle and smoking. I interpreted this to piece in the context of the title to mean that this alter ego man in the painting is entirely different than the person it belongs to. Neither directly influenced the aesthetic or style of my own piece, but they got me to a starting point. Both pieces made it clear to me that I needed to do a piece that depicts my alter ego as being someone entirely opposite of myself, like creating my alter ego rather than trying to find ways that I present an alter ego in my daily life. This idea allowed me to step back from my mini identity crisis and truly be creative, and essentially regain my own identity again through that process.

After deciding the way for me to go about this project was to create an alter ego entirely opposite of myself, I immediately knew I wanted my alter ego to have red hair. I’m not entirely sure why, but it just made sense that my alter ego would have red hair. I particularly liked Pitchanan Saayopoua’s painting, “Redhead I,” specifically because of the red hair against the blue background, which is the color palette I used in my piece. I began thinking about all the things that I am not, and began attaching them to who I wanted my alter ego to be. I wanted her to be relaxed and stress-free, because that is a feeling that I pretty much never experience due to my crazy busy life. I also wanted the sense of freedom and innocence to be attributed to her, because I feel like in my own life, there were times where I was forced to grow up fast and had a lot to worry about. As I began creating the persona of my alter ego and looking up photographs of women that I felt encompassed this persona in various ways, I slowly started to envision what my piece was going to look like. 2 photos that inspired my piece the most were by Alexandra Bochkareva, they both depicted red haired girls, one with a fox in a forest, and the other a portrait in water. Both feel very whimsical and innocent, which were attributes I wanted to incorporate into my own piece. To further express the feeling of innocence and freedom, I incorporated white flowers, somewhat resembling daisies in my alter ego’s hair, because daisies symbolize innocence and purity, and the color white often symbolizes freedom.

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