Welcome back to all who come to this happy place.
For our final project in Illustrator we had to create a self portrait. Using the pen tool, gradient mesh, and shape builder tool. To start I pasted a headshot of myself into a layer, and in a new layers I used the pen tool to outlined my hair, face, and facial features: eyes, mouth, nose. After these shapes were created and each in their individual layer, I filled them using the eye dropper tool to match the real color from the photo. After the shapes were colored I went grabbed the gradient mesh tool. I added a gradient mesh to my hair to replicate the different highlights in my hair, to my lips to replicate the coloring of my slightly worn lipstick, and to my face to replicate the shading happening in the photo from the light. I used a radial gradient on my eyes to illustrate the different shades in my eyes. After my face was filled and had different gradients, I then added lines to create more depth. I added lines with a 50% opacity to my hair as well as lines with 50% opacity to the outside of my smile. This helped emphasize my natural smile and cheeks. Once I finished the image of myself I then moved to my background. I created dozens of sunflowers to surround myself. I try to live my life in bloom. Constantly growing and thrive when I am learning and growing as a person. In addition, sunflowers are very positive symbols. I believe it is much easier to like a life as a Positive Polly versus Negative Nelly. I constantly surround myself with flowers. They are natural beauties that are all unique and come from the earth simply to grow, help species survive, and bring joy. I have always loved the quote "Be Honest. Be Nice. Be a flower not a weed." I try to live by this quote. It makes life a lot more enjoyable when you're nice, honest, kind, thoughtful, etc. and this will bring life to yourself and the world around you. Below you can see the final product of my self portrait.

I had a blast creating this self portrait! This is by far my favorite assignment we have done. I can't wait to make several other portraits of my friends, family, and dog. Thank you for visiting my blog! I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did.
See ya real soon!
Carley