E E R I E S A M
A fun, personal project of mine! I wanted to turn myself into the creepy, Dominican version of Frida Kahlo.
Reference Photos
Frida Kahlo is one of my biggest inspirations. I fell in love with her very early on in my undergrad studies and felt an instant connection to her story, personality, and artistry.
She’s created so many self-portraits, so it was hard to choose one. I began researching my favorite self-portraits of Frida, plants and flowers that I wanted to use for my self-portrait.
I also looked through my selfies and came across the picture of myself below.
Combining the Images
Once I had all of my images gathered, I started uploading them one by one into Adobe Illustrator.
The flowers are my favorites from both the United States and the Dominican Republic, which symbolize both sides of my identity. I also added a Monstera plant leaf because they are so beautiful to me. I began duplicating the images to help make the flower crown and foliage to give them a fuller, more lush feel. Mainly, I wanted it to look like I was standing in a trippy, ethereal forest :)
For the background, I wanted to have a moody, sunset vibe, so I played around with different gradient features in Illustrator till I found the one that worked best.
Once I was done, I saved the file and uploaded it into Procreate on my tablet to illustrate the stars and the line details.
At the very end, I chose to erase the eyes because I wanted it to have a soulless, creepy effect that has now become a signature of my current illustrations (hee hee)
This project was one of my favorites to conceive and execute for sure!
