Portrait Of A Portrait

Kate Bush, Orange. Digital. 2022.

So, for my first post, i thought it would be cool to explain why i love portraits so much. and when i say “love”, I truly mean it.

I mean, there’s always been something so beautiful and satisfying to me about getting the expression on someone’s face just right; portraying the emotions they were feeling at the time in a way that’s almost tangible. I’ve been drawing portraits since I was 12, and there’s been a running theme underneath each one: it’s always a person I’m obsessed with.

And, no, I’m not talking stalker-level obsessed. More like the kind of obsession you feel when you’re gay and you don’t know it, and obsessing is how you express that. Y’know… that kind of obsessed. The relatable kind.

I’ve had so many celebrity crushes growing up, but I didn’t know they were crushes because, well, they were women. They didn’t look or feel like the types of crushes my friends were having, so how was I supposed to know? Well, whether I knew it or not, I felt it. Any time a new crush would come around, I wanted to watch every movie they starred in, listen to all the music they made, whatever it was; and I always wanted to draw them. I drew Molly Ringwald when I was in my John Hughes film phase, Alicia Silverstone after watching Clueless for the first time, and Geena Davis (after watching Beetlejuice, but also literally everything she’s been in), who, to my memory, was my first crush.

Drawing portraits was a great twofold hobby: it served as a consistent way for me to practice art, and it was a funky way for me to get my feelings out as a teenager. I’d just throw on a movie I’d seen a thousand times or put my iTunes playlist on shuffle and draw for hours and hours. When it was summer break, I’d draw until the sun came up. I’d spend the quiet hours of the night sketching and erasing while everyone else was sleeping, making sure that every detail was as perfect as I could make it. The night was my time to be… me. Even if I didn’t fully understand who that was just yet.

So, now, as an adult, I still make portraits as a way to tangibly show my love for someone, whether they’re someone I’ll never meet or someone I talk to every day. I’ve eased up on the perfection thing a bit, and I’ve been letting myself get a little more creatively carried away, which has opened me up to a whole new world within myself. My portraits are colorful, messy, and the perfect representation of where I am as an artist, and just like when I was 12, I still get a thrill when I can perfectly recreate a nose, a hand, or the way someone’s hair falls. They’ve genuinely done more for me than I think I can succinctly convey in one blog post. I’ve found an outlet of expression in them that’s been unmatched throughout my artistic journey and my life as a whole. Portraits just light up the artist in me, in a way that other things don’t, and they’ll always and forever be my favorite thing to create.