Paintings + Portraits
A selection of paintings and portraits I've drawn/painted over the past few years, in chronological order!
In middle school, most of my portraits were digital, and looking back on my old art style I'm not a big fan of how inconsistently blended these portraits are (the shadows are often blended out too much, and the eyes and hair end up too stark in comparison). This is was probably my best one (June 2022), but you can still sort of see the odd contrast of blended and unblended elements.
I started exploring other art mediums at the end of middle school, which led to these colored pencil portraits of Gamora (August 2021), from Guardians of the Galaxy. The left hand side was my first attempt, with basic Crayola pencils. I then invested in pencils that were easier to blend and improved the proportions for what I think was a much better second attempt. Though the final version is still one of my favorite portraits, I didn't love how permanent pencils were as a medium, so I haven't done many colored pencil portraits since.
This was one of my first painted portraits (October 2022), and I quickly decided I liked acrylics much more than the digital art I had been doing in middle school, and they were easier to work with than pencils because I could paint over parts that I wasn't happy with.
I painted this self portrait in my freshman year art class, and it was one of my first acrylic portraits using color. The assignment was to paint a portrait that represented us, so the cutouts in the face were meant to represent some of my interests.
Another freshman year art assignment (December 2022, acrylics), this one required us to trace our outline and paint at least four body parts. I tried to get a little more creative and symbolic with this one, with the various spotlit organs representing my insecurities.
This was my rough recreation of one of Lyn Lapid's album covers, and one of the first times I painted skin in realistic color with acrylics (February 2023). I think this reference was ironically a little easier because of the blue lighting, which meant the colors were already a little off and thereby more forgiving.
I went back to monochrome for this sketchbook painting (May 2023, acrylics) but this time in pink instead of grayscale. This was a fun challenge in capturing dramatic facial expressions, though the hardest part was definitely the hair—and I'm honestly still not entirely satisfied with the level of detail relative to the rest of the painting.
I painted this mock Magic the Gathering card for my cousin's law school graduation (June 2023). I'm not at all satisfied with how the face came out (working with something playing card sized was a struggle), but I still like the concept. The image is a mix of acrylic paint and colored pencil (for those tiny details), and the rest was colored pencil.
This sketchbook painting (August 2023, acrylics) of Tori Spring (from Heartstopper) was a bit of a struggle with color...she was not meant to be that orange.
For this painting of my brother (December 2023, acrylics) I decided to just lean into the unnatural colors; the color scheme was meant to mimic a reference I found of a mentat in the new Dune movie (the text is a reference to a joke post about mentats).
A birthday gift for my friend (November 2024, acrylics).
This painting of Caitlyn from Arcane (November 2024) was my first big water color portrait (with some oil pastels mixed into the background and the highlights). I'm not super happy with some of the proportions (particularly the top of the head, which wasn't in my reference), but I am proud of how the shading turned out for a semi-first attempt.
I tried to mimic the Arcane art style for this self portrait (December 2024). I painted this digitally, and though I don't think I quite nailed the style or perfectly captured my likeness, I do think it's a big improvement from the digital art I did in middle school, since it's in full realistic color and I didn't over-blend the shading.
