Samsara: I am the Universe and the Universe is Me
A life drawing final.
The objective of the project is to draw a self portrait in a body of someone else.
The idea behind the final life drawing project is “I am the universe and the universe is me”. I had been pondered about the meaning of life then and the idea spoke to me when I was thinking about the idea for the final life drawing project. Originally we were all intangible beings, souls. However we are living in a tangible world wearing tangible and materialistic clothes called skins, characteristics, preferences and appearance. They do not fully explain who we really are and yet we tend to try containing ourselves in specific labels. we all are portrayed as someone other than who we really are. We are wearing clothes of materialism and going through the journey of finding who we really are.
For the drawing, I included an image of me taking off the mask of tangible illusion and reveal my true intangible self. I also included lotus flowers around the figure because they symbolize samsara or reincarnation. For the medium, I chose to use black and white PanPastels to create an image of a galaxy dissolved in a murky, muddy pond. I used PanPastels rather than using graphite because it is a lot easier to blend black and white pastel to create nice transition from the pond water to the galaxy and also put nice gradation on creating the image of the galaxy. Since I wanted the focal point of the drawing to be me, and I also wanted the background to look dark just like muddy water and galaxy, I made the contrast between the values of the lightest part of my body to that of the background to be really extreme. I chose a vertical composition so that viewers can see the progression from the murky water to galaxy.
Thank you for viewing!
