Concept
For my portrait I didn’t really focus on making the face shape or body similar to mine, I wanted to present my hobby and something I love doing. My goal was to create a drawing of me going on a hike in a forest.
Not focusing on the facial and body features allowed me to focus a bit more on the background and create a mini forest. I also decided to add a backpack and a hat both of which are essential hiking equipment.
Process
I started by initially creating the body and the neck. I then proceeded to create the head and the details for the arms. The face seemed like the most difficult task so I left that for last. I created the background with the trees and the ground and also added the backpack straps so it is clear to the viewers that there is a backpack behind the avatar. The face features turned out to not be so complicated and were done using basic shapes and I am proud the way it turned out, simple yet effective.
//eyes
fill('white');
ellipse(170, 170, 40, 30); // left eye white
ellipse(230, 170, 40, 30); // right eye white
fill('black');
circle(170, 170, 15); // left eye pupil
circle(230, 170, 15); // right eye pupil
//mouth
noFill();
stroke('black');
strokeWeight(2);
arc(200, 230, 50, 30, 0, PI); // smiling mouth
The mouth, even though it used a simple arc was fun to work on and figure out how to set it up properly which took a bit of time.
Reflection and future improvements
I had so much fun working on this mini project and playing with all the shapes and design that p5js allows. In the future I would like to perhaps add more details to the face and the body as well as add some animations which would bring the avatar to life. Also somehow making the art interactive is something that would probably be interesting to incorporate and would further improve the user experience.