Self Portrait
In recent years, the amount of photos taken per year exceed the trillion. More than 90% of these have been taken with a mobile phone, and surprise surprise most are selfies. It’s easy to create a selfie, it doesn’t matter where you are, who you are with, or what you are doing; if there’s enough light you are good to go. By now it’s almost involuntary; they don’t require much thought. But in essence, you take a selfie because there’s something about yourself that you want to capture. Wether that is the great hair day you are having, who you bumped into down the street, or the line at Starbucks you’re forever stuck in. There’s a message behind your portrait. And images, as the saying goes, are worth a million words.
So when the challenge came to make a self-portrait, some thought had to go behind it. It couldn’t be a selfie snap. Everything portrayed needed to convey a message. A message about, well, me. Every element had to be thought out and added in a way that reflected how I wanted to be perceived.
In order to achieve this, a mind map was the first step. So I wrote my name in the middle and started thinking of the things that I believe are representative of me. The concepts of sports, music, animals, art, and beard came straight through.
As you can see on the picture above, sports is probably what I believe defines me the most. I love everything that has to do with bicycles. Tennis is what has gotten me to where I am today, and has definitely given me more than what I will probably ever give back to it. Surfing and skateboarding are more than sports to me, in essence, they are ways of life. They have shaped the person I am in more ways than one. Climbing is kind of new in my life, but I’m always up for a challenge and I don’t mind being a beginner; it’s always a good time to learn something new. Lastly, golf has a special place in my heart. It’s a direct link with my dad; I enjoy being out there with him for hours at a time with no intention other than having a good time and forgetting about everything else.
My main angle from the get go then was bringing the sports I love front and center. I looked at myself in the mirror and the thing that stood out the most was my beard since it occupies a pretty large fraction of it. And so, the first sketches ended up looking something like this.
With an idea already in my head, I then started to look for some inspiration. I remembered some beard illustrations from an illustrator who’s work I like a lot, Jer Collins (@jer.collins) , giving my idea a very clear direction.
But, I also wanted to both add more concepts and differentiate my work from the illustrations. In another class the collage of a black and white hand (below left) appeared, and instantly I thought “that’s what I was looking for”.
So my work began. I took a bunch of pictures doing different faces, and ultimately chose the one I look the silliest. I chose it as a note-to-self to remind me that I don’t have to take myself too serious. To give it a collage feel, I cut it with the idea of “how would a 6-year-old do this?”.
Following that same concept I broke my face features apart, as well as my beard, and added pictures of climbing, surfing, a bike, and a tennis player. Not just any tennis player though; former number-one-in-the-world Brazilian star Guga Kuerten. He’s not only my favorite tennis player ever, but my dog, who passed away late last year, was named Guga in his honor. Making his appearance on the collage just that more special.
I also wanted to have some words. A song; a phrase; a quote. Words that I live by. I have had Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If” on my notes for some years now. Every time I read it, it reminds me of all the things that I need to have and to do in order to be virtuous. Virtuous in a human sense: not perfect; humble; patient; broken; resilient.
In order to blend Kipling’s words with the image, I looked for different ways to use them in a visually stimulating way. After a number of trials and errors, I landed on this L shaped loop on the contour of the mustard framed collage of my face (mustard is my favorite sauce/condiment). What I liked most about this layout, was that it added to the “if-ness” of the poem. If you can read this; if you are willing to twist your head; if you can stick to it till the end. In my mind it just made sense.
For the final step, I highlighted the words in the looped poem that stood out to me the most. All the virtues I value from that conditional proposed by Kipling. And as a final detail, I made the loop end legibly with the words “..you’ll be a man.”
So without further ado, here’s my portrait!
