Self Shape

I’ll admit, when I was thinking about this week’s assignment, I was very nervous. I do not see myself as a very creative or artistic person, so being asked to represent myself through visuals was very nerve-wracking. With that in mind, I chose to use a downloaded on my iPad to create my self shape, as I felt that working with one type of media would be best for me and my abilities, and I do not live in a place with very great access to paper materials.

Truthfully, my self shape is not very good, nor is it very artistic or visually appealing either. However, while it may seem as though it is very random and unorganized, I did spend time trying to assemble it in a way that made sense to me. When I first thought of how to represent myself visually, my mind instantly went to using various colors to represent the various sides of myself. Beginning at the top of my shape, I used pink and blue to represent my friends and family. I feel as though my relationships in both of these groups have been (and continue to be) monumental in shaping the way I see and exist within the world, so they were the first thing I thought to include. Beyond that, my family side is also the side where I was introduced to religion and culture, so I would be remiss to not include that in my shape. In an attempt to connect the two colors, I have a light purple spanning across both shapes. The symbolism here is somewhat obvious, I have friends that are family, and family that are friends, and since they are both a part of me, I wanted to be sure to have them connected in some way, rather than be isolated. This part is continued throughout the entirety of my shape, I have yellow to represent my goals and career (becoming an educator), a teal shade to represent my current passions and interests, and a mix of light pink, light green, and white to represent all that I will become. That section is not completely filled in as it is not complete yet, and it will always be changing and shifting as I grow older.

Beyond the colors, there is (somewhat) a shape design that I used to guide the spacing of the colors. I started with one large circle, and then put various concentric shapes inside of it (a star and then an octagon). I wanted to have some sort of shape that I felt I could easily divide into separate parts (even if some details got covered up), so I could have an easier time organizing each color I was going to use. Rather than use concentric circles, I used the star and octagon because I felt it was a more unique and more interesting design, and that feels more accurate when representing myself. I like to think of myself as a fun person, so I wanted to use fun shapes inside the polished off exterior circle. Rather than be perfect and all in uniform, the pieces of myself are unique from one another. In the middle, I left the octagon as the final and smallest shape so I would have room in the middle of my self shape to make a point. I had that space be colored in both black and white. Black is the presence of all the colors and white is the absence of all colors; at my core, I am all of the aspects (colors) of myself that I mentioned, and I am none of them all at the same time.

The reason I had such a difficult time drawing my self shape to represent myself, is because I (like every other human) am very complex, with so many different experiences, opinions, and thoughts that it felt impossible to capture all of that and put it onto a piece of paper. For all my own diverse thoughts, experiences and opinions, I also know very little about the world; hence the use of black and white at the center of my self shape.

Overall, I had never had to think of myself in a visual way before. Any time I had to analyze or express myself, I was able to do so with words. However, this experience was very enlightening and honestly fun! Even though the final product won’t be hanging up in the Louvre anytime soon, it was exciting to try to represent myself in a way completely foreign to me and out of my comfort zone.