Life Drawing Self Portrait

Last semester I took a Life Drawing course. Our final project was to create a self portrait from observation and we could use any medium we liked. I chose to create a self portrait with oil paint, representing my experience falling in and out of love with myself over my life's span. This project was difficult, but I really wanted to stay true to myself and what I was experiencing at that given time. It only felt right to focus my piece on the push and pull of self love because every day is a new challenge, trying to minimize deprecating thoughts and focus solely on the positive supportive ones. This project took a couple weeks to complete and here is the final result.

I feel like I learned a great deal about myself during this project. While it can be toxic to constantly analyze how you see yourself, I think this careful consideration was what I really needed to accept my insecurities and move forward towards acceptance.