My Best Friend

Artist Statement: To create this piece, I was heavily inspired by gouache and watercolor portraits, as well as my admiration for my best friend. This piece is digital, and for me, the exploration was in the realistic gouache brush I used, as well as the process of doing pretty much the entire piece on just one layer. For this artwork, I used a reference photo taken on an old digital camera, so sometimes it was difficult to pick out specific colors and values because of the low quality image. This piece went through a, frankly scary, rough phase in the beginning and middle, but once I pushed through that and got everything accurately in, my absolute favorite part was changing little details so the piece felt less like a recreation of a photo and more like an original piece from my mind. Taking what was there and elevating it with more vibrant colors, more stylized shapes, and overall adding in the essence of my friend was so so enjoyable. I also partially made this piece to fit into a separate collage that I’m making for my friend’s 18th birthday and my last music fest trip with them, so I blended the gouache feel with a more abstract collage feel for the background, using the gouache brush, but making more abstract shapes and designs.