What Is Beauty?

Project Details

Soft Pastel, Tortillion Stick, Graphite, and Charcoal

Size: 14" x 11"

For this project, I was tasked to think about how artists should think about beauty as they are naturally concerned with this theme, and come up with a response to this subject accompanied with a drawing of any medium or size.

My response was that artists create based on the situations that make them feel. It does not matter what the emotion is, as long as it is powerful enough to inspire creation. With that, I recalled a separate project I had done with photographer Leah Den Bok's Humanizing the Homeless, and decided that her pictures, or those that are similar to them, would be an adequate subject for my response.

Reference

Pictured here is my reference photo. I chose this one because of the subject's proximity to the viewer, and how it encourages them to look deeper on the subject of beauty. This project taught me how to work with soft pastels in terms of being able to blend its hues smoothly, despite the stark difference in its colors.