Self Portrait

Our first assignment over at the art_wac was to do a self-portrait. I was gonna draw mine by hand but ended up not having time. Then earlier this week decided I needed a new banner and look for my LiveJournal. I have a picture of myself in my journal banner because, well, the journal is by and about me, so why not? So I combined the two projects into one.

Technical stuff: Made completely in Illustrator CS1 with a Wacom tablet. I took a photo of myself and traced it by hand in Illustrator. Uhh, that's pretty much it. ;)

Art Stuff: As a portrait, it is me, obviously. Green is one of my favorite colors (blue is the other but my journal was already blue, plus I look better in green ;) ). The wolf is my totem spirit and favorite animal. The trees represent Alaska and my connection to and love for the outdoors. The hill is a recycled graphic I made for an ARIA wall that failed - I love fields for the feel of running free that they represent. The swashes (bitbox.com) are pretty and almost tribal, the way I connect to society. The text is the name of my journal, and the Japanese 石山 から is my name "Ishiyama Kara", "Ishiyama" being my last name translated literally ('Stenberg' meaning 'stone mountain' in Swedish, 'Ishiyama' meaning roughly the same).