Height: 7" Width: 10"

Master Artist: Albrecht Durer

Current Artist: Proko

Materials: Graphite Pencils and mixed media paper

Ideas: My ideas for this piece were a bit more complex than the first piece I did because for this topic I am going to be completing three pieces to portray it. This is my first piece on my struggle with asexuality. I first realized that I was asexual during 8th grade, around the time Covid-19 started to get really serious. I had been denying it for a very long time up until then, so it kind of hit me in the gut when I accepted it. I am still struggling to accept myself because of the negative stigmas and beliefs surrounding my sexuality. I have experienced a lot of feelings of isolation, worthlessness, and despair while trying to accept myself, and I really wanted to translate the pain that I experience from that into my art. I decided to do this idea as a part of my portfolio because it is a very vulnerable and deep topic for me to talk about, and for my portfolio this year I am trying to create more meaningful art through my hardships.

The idea that I have created for this piece might seem a bit strange to people at the beginning, because It doesn't outright give you any clues as to what the piece is actually about. I enjoy writing and art a lot, and I really like writing poetry, and there's this one idea I had for a poem about my asexuality that I never wrote, and it compares being asexual to eating rotten fruit. The fruit (apple) symbolizes sex and intimacy, and when it's not rotten, it's supposed to be a positive experience. When it is rotten, it basically symbolizes that the intimacy and love have gone sour, that it's repulsive; it turns your stomach. I am eating a perfectly fine apple in the first piece because I want to show two things. 1. How a lot of people in the Asexual community have been told that they are just late bloomers and that they will come around to liking intimacy soon, or "how could you not like it? That's crazy!". By showing that the apple is not rotten at the beginning, it symbolizes how everyone who isn't asexual sees intimacy (as a great experience), and how isolating it is to have your identity brushed off and boiled down to being a "late bloomer". (also how damaging it can be to try to push away from your identity to fit in)  2. My plan is to make the apple start to slowly get rotten in the next two pieces, so it kind of reveals how ace people feel about intimacy in the final piece.  (NOTE: every ace person experiences their asexuality in different ways, this is just my personal experience with it) I intend to incorporate some of my writing into all three pieces, but I am going to complete that when all three are finished. My main goal is to show the isolation and worthlessness I feel about myself because of the beliefs people have about my sexuality. 

Materials: I used the same materials from my last piece. For this piece I used the graphite in a less harsh fashion, wanting everything to be a bit more fuzzy and soft, kind of like sadness. I really like how the gradients and shading turned out on this piece, and I can really see myself improving with graphite already.

Process: I took pictures of myself for all three of the pieces for this topic, and I edited them to be in grayscale so I would match the shading better. I was a bit more concerned about finishing this piece on time because it had more detail than the last piece I completed, and I think I shouldn't have rushed at then of completing it because a few parts of the drawing look less refined. I did have a bit of a problem trying to figure out what the background would be, so I made an "out of focus" effect for the background (the background is just part of a doorway and a light switch). I also struggled with getting part of the hand to look more realistic like the rest of the piece since that was a part of the drawing I was rushing to get done. I also tried to work on evening and deepening my shadows in this piece, which was less of a struggle than the last piece I did but it was a bit difficult for the jawline because I didn't want it to look too patchy or unrealistic.

Overall I think I had an easier time with the process because I made room for mistakes and bumps in the road. One thing I might add to this piece later on is tears running down my cheeks to really show the anxiety and aloneness I was feeling. I can really see my improvement from my last piece, and I look forward to enhancing my skills more as I complete more pieces.