New Sketches

Besides Christmas cards and rubber duck fashion design, I've been exploring a new arena.
Ever since I got my results back from 23andme.com and Dr. McDonald, I've been trying to figure out how to create a body of work.
Can one make art from being identified as 87.8% African and 12.2% European?
Sure.
Art is so universal that anything can be!
I love the face.
The many emotions, the movements, the features.
A billion adjectives can describe how much I enjoy creating art about the face!
So in combining the research and facial enthusiasm, abstracted portraiture seemed to be my answer.


For this upcoming project.
The shape of Africa is in various crevices of the human face.
The lips are my favorite- I enjoy creating the mouth- its variations of reds, pinks, browns, and purples. It's a feature that seems to stand out the most in my portraits.
This isn't any different.
The eyes are closed, lashes peering down at that strangely shaped sideways, African continental lips- perhaps a commentary on where this specific feature of mine has derived from.
In lightly drawing this, I can't help but think of Lip Letters, from a previous blog post. I hate my own lips, but this makes me love a bit them more.
Not a lot, but bit by bit, I'm starting to realize their exception and rarity.
By rarity, I mean in the media, by what I see in television and magazines.
Barely do women of color have full lips, but white women with "pouty" mouths are all the rage and that baffles me so much.
The shape of this mouth I've created speaks of such exoticism and cultural beauty that simply fascinates me. Though it is just a sketch, I'm rather proud of it and seek to draw more!
African lips- not strange, but unique and lovely.


The full cheek.
I'm thinking of filling in the African continent with each individual country with red, black, green, and yellow.
Maybe even bold rainbow colors featured in globes and the maps I've Google'd.
Not sure.
Still playing around with the idea.


At the beginning very rough stage of the nose.
Interesting enough, it seems a perfect fit!
Like the much needed line at the center of the lips portrait, I'll be adding nostrils here.
This body of work is gradually building.
There will been an eye, a hair, and maybe a brow and/or ear piece, but for now, I'm working on weaving this concept together with language and figuring out how to incorporate that tiny 12.2% European aspect.
But the thing is, I don't want to use my own face.
Having made so many self portraits, I want to escape that.
Weird huh?
Considering that I'm utilizing my own results....
As for final explorations, rich oil pastels on dark papers or acrylic paintings?
Maybe oils?
Until I get all of these sketches properly uniformed, I'll get to that place.
For now, it's the sketchbook and Prismacolor colored pencils for now.