Crying portrait

My most recent piece of work is the "crying portrait". It took me two years to restart my efforts toward this piece. The idea came to me when I was experiencing a heavy heart break. I couldn't get myself out of an emotional pit. Constantly crying and bottling up intense feelings of shame and self hatred.. Finally I decided to use my camera to photograph myself in the then present state of emotion. It had helped me to temporarily redirect my emotions of the moment and to refocus myself on what I needed to do to get through the day. During that time period life was just about surviving one day at a time. The composition is of that feeling of shame, of being emotionally stuck, and forever lost in a stream of self doubt.

Two years ago it would have been impossible for me to work on this image, and others that will coincide, without those feelings overtaking me. Now, with a clear head and a healed heart, I am able to revisit that era of my life artistically and with a better understanding of what I was going through.

As an artist most of what I create is in some way biographical; and though I often use myself as the model of reference I prefer to see my work as being an entity of its own. Meaning I don't look at the image of the girl being me, despite the fact that I was the model of reference for the girl. She has a life of her own. She represents aspects, emotions, characteristics, events etc etc etc of myself, but in the end she is she the creation and I am me the creator.

The piece is far from being complete. At the moment it is a simple pencil drawing with drips of tea cascading down the paper and over the face. Hair has been painted with a lovely raspberry red zinger tea from Celestial Seasonings. The color from this tea is more violet then blue, like the other red herbal teas I have used. I have even see this tea create a blackish color. Still experimenting to find what conditions are needed to recreate the black. The type of paper used, temp of tea and amount of tea applied had a huge effect on the visual outcome. I am challenging myself to only use tea and pencils for the construction of the image. I often grab other materials to produce a wanted effect and that can sometimes for me create a visually busy feeling in my artwork. I am going with the concept that less is more in the material sense. I'm debating on whether I should use tea to color the face slightly or leave it in pencil. I could do a very light coloring to enhance the form. The drips over the face will not go away and I am fine with it. I think that details adds to the sense of being lost and imprisoned in emotions and thoughts.