Description

This is not a photograph! it consists entirely of single color shapes made with the pen tool.

This is my self portrait that I made in Adobe Illustrator. It was definitely inspired by Chuck Close, of whom, I'm a big fan. The meticulous recreation of an image using single color blobs may seem time consuming (it was), and one might be confused as to why I spent so much time to recreate the image that I already had. The answer is that the process for me was the art of it. It was really an incredible experience to be working zoomed in close and then zoom back out and see that what I had completed was almost indistinguishable from the image. I feel I've learned a lot about color and how our brain sees images in this process.

 I have purposefully made some of the patches of color much larger and more visible than others for instance the juxtaposition of my left eye (very detailed) and left cheek (not so detailed) forces the viewer to see both an image and seemingly random blobs of color simultaneously, and then hopefully they can share in the fascination that I explored with how our mind perceives an image.

What's great about a portrait like this is that its really flexible and allows for any talent level. If you don't want to spend tons of time making meticulous details, perhaps you could make a more abstract piece with larger shapes. This might even allow for more artistic interpretation.