Anxiety Awareness Week 2014

Brief:

Since Anxiety is something that effects almost every aspect of my life, I decided that since Anxiety awareness week was coming up soon, I would do something to recognise this, as well as try to possibly educate, through a visual means, what life is like when suffering from this. I knew this would be an iffy subject to go over, as I never like fully discussing what happens when I experience anxiety, but obviously drawing an illustration is heaps better than sitting down and trying to explain to someone what it’s like.

Evaluation:

 I knew straight away that I wanted this to be a pure black and white, pure and simple, without anything to distract the viewer from the main parts of this image. I also chose to complete this illustration in pencil, as I think keeping things simple and pure it the best way to get a message across. I started off with a really basic sketch, and wasn’t sure if I was going to actually out any features on the face of my character, simply because there isn’t a defining face for who anxiety and depression can happen to. But I did end up choosing to put a face, which I suppose looks a little bit like my own (but not intentionally) just to make it a little more personal. I wasn’t quite sure on how to depict anxiety as an actual subject for about three days, as trying to describe it to someone is difficult enough, but the defining word that stood out whenever I’ve tried to describe it is “gripping” and “something that can just cling to you for hours,” and this gave me the idea for a talon, as its scary, sharp and strong enough to project the power that anxiety can have over someone.

There are plenty strengths and weaknesses in this piece for me to pick out. A strength that is most obvious to me is my line work, and I really enjoy using line density to add character and an overall theme to my work. I have a pretty steady hand and am able to create the long flowing streaks in her hair and eyelashes, but am also able to make the bold and angled lines on the talons gripping her hair. Although one of my weaknesses is my trademark “female face” that I use in literally all of my work, and I WOULD like to sometime soon just concentrate on drawing males more, and depict different looking people rather than my “default face.”

I think the skills I have shown in this piece are skills I would really like to take on with me through to later work, and I think I could achieve this by going back to doing more traditional sketch work before putting my work on digitally, as now I tend to just do my work straight away in a digital format. I think this was inspired slightly through researching Dave Correia's work online, as I found that his way of showing so much detail an using a traditional workflow at that.