Concept
When I first thought about what kind of recognizable features I would like to emphasize in my work, I chose 3 of them: curly hair, earrings and background.
In this portrait, I decided to solely focus on collaboration between 2D shapes and colors to bring simplistic, yet realistic picture of me.
My first task lied in creating an interesting background for portrait that would resemble my personality in some way. Walking through library, I stumbled upon one journal that was only focused on photographs of ocean and waves. It reminded me of calmness and solitude that I do value myself, so I implemented gradient of water on background.
Furthermore, I was confused on how I could illustrate curly hair in p5, but then I decided to choose two colors and use unfilled circles patterns to show the curls.
Working on facial features, I decided to choose style similar to emoji drawings. I worked with opacity and arc’s to deliver also very calm mood of the face.
At the right bottom corner I decided to add a small signature of letter A, as it is very symbolic letter in my life.
Highlight of some code that I’m particularly proud of
//setting background
//first row
strokeWeight(15);
stroke(91,184,229,50)
fill(93, 170, 233)
rect(0,300,100,100)
fill(90, 177, 231)
rect(100,300,100,100)
fill(91, 184, 229)
rect(200,300,100,100)
fill(95, 190, 226)
rect(300,300,100,100)
//second row
strokeWeight(15);
stroke(110, 201, 220,50)
fill(133, 211, 214)
rect(0,200,100,100)
fill(121, 206, 216)
rect(100,200,100,100)
fill(110, 201, 220)
rect(200,200,100,100)
fill(101, 196, 223)
rect(300,200,100,100)
//thrid row
strokeWeight(15);
stroke(157, 220, 210,50)
fill(145, 216, 212)
rect(0,100,100,100)
fill(157, 220, 210)
rect(100,100,100,100)
fill(170, 224, 210)
rect(200,100,100,100)
fill(182, 228, 211)
rect(300,100,100,100)
//fourth row
strokeWeight(15);
stroke(218, 239, 221,50)
fill(228, 243, 226)
rect(0,0,100,100)
fill(218, 239, 221)
rect(100,0,100,100)
fill(206, 235, 216)
rect(200,0,100,100)
fill(195, 232, 213)
rect(300,0,100,100)
I am particularly proud of the background of the portrait, because it reveals additional detail I put in the work to deliver idea about my character. I had intention in mind about creating a gradient using the tools we already learned on the lessons, so I experimented with colors, strokes, opacity, to create a kind of smooth picture that would resemble a gradient. And I think I could accomplish that.
Embedded sketch
Reflection and ideas for future work
In the future assignments, I would like to explore more efficient and realistic ways to portrait a gradient background and curly hair. In this work, major part of the code required manual instructions to create a specific illustration of curls and pattern in the background. I want to find out more efficient ways of how I could code these things. Moreover, I would further work on more specific and detail-oriented picture of the earrings, as it stays one of the key features in my portrait. I would tie shape of earrings to Kazakh national ornaments to show my identity. In addition, I didn’t have much chance to work with interactivity of my portrait in this concept, so next time I would definitely create more interactive background or interactive face features. As I progress in interactive media, I would also love to implement 3D shapes in my work.