The majority of my work is digital, composed of pixels instead of paints or pencils. As an artist, I appreciate speed and efficiency so for the past four years, I have drawn cartoon-like figures with distinct line art, flat colors, and cel shading. However this year, inspired by the work of digital artists Jessica Nguyen and Ariana Orner, I have started to experiment with digitally painting in a semi-realistic, “lineless” style. In this series, I use blended shadows and highlights and blur certain aspects of the composition to distinguish the main focal point from the rest of the environment. This capstone series was an opportunity to develop more complex backgrounds and further push myself beyond my comfort zone.

For the majority of my art career, I have drawn women as my primary subject matter. These women in some ways are avatars for myself; they convey a full spectrum of emotions through their expressions and postures. The environments help evoke those emotions even further through light, shadow, and color. For example, in Malevolence I used darker, desaturated colors and a shadowy forest background to create a sensation of malice and foreboding. In Tranquility, I used a lighter, more pastel color palette and bright dappled light to create a peaceful forest scene by a stream. 

This year, my general state of mind had not been the best due to the isolation of COVID. As a result, my art revolved around darker themes, which is why I started my series with a project focusing on malevolence. However as time went by, I have crawled out of this darker mindset and transitioned to a much more pleasant feeling, tranquility. My last pieces, Depression and Acceptance, illustrate this shift into a more positive mental state. In Depression and Acceptance, the faint reflections in the window mirror how emotions are complex, layered, and cyclical. Often in a depressive state, there will be a time when things are better. Afterward when you think you have moved on, there will be remnants of those darker times from your past. Knowing how complex my emotions and the experiences of my friends and family are serves as inspiration for my work.