My Self-Shape

design of my thoughts

Going beyond what I look like in a photo from the last assignment, I looked into myself to find what makes me Komal, from my likes to things I support. I have always been someone who turned towards my creativity in my free time. From building lego buildings to cooking pretty presentations of food, and now owning everything needed for most mediums of art, this assignment made me want to do something different. The first line of the assignment started with the quote, "an individual may be [their] our audience,” by Erving Goffman. I thought about this quote a while, asking myself and the people around me what they thought of it. From different interpretations like putting yourself in an outside perspective, looking within yourself, and understanding who you are, to understand the image you put out in the world and how you feel about it, I came to my conclusion.

I was unsure what my image would look like, but my appreciation for line art and scrapbooking made a showing. I decided to go ahead and make it a digital drawing as I have not used the Procreate app as much as I would have liked and wanted to challenge myself. I started my idea with a background color, something light and warm-toned. I decided on choosing a nude pink fairly quickly and chose to move forward not wanting to overthink my choice. From there, I pick one of my favorite colors: a teal/navy blue to create my line art. I started drawing mindlessly and drew a single-line art girl looking up. I knew that I should keep this even though this was not too abstract. I associate myself being a woman to have higher ideals therein.

The next thing I drew was a light bulb that has two meanings. Growing up, my dad always was someone who loved building things. From the first time I picked up a hammer, I knew I too liked to create new stuff. Many people would claim that woodworking was a boy's job to learn but my dad wanted me to learn. My mother on the other hand would complain about many calluses and jokes that no guy would hold my hand. Over the years, we built many things together small and big, from a birdhouse to a treehouse. The second thing this light bulb means to me is creativity. A light bulb going off in terms of innovation and intelligence. During this exercise, I realized my persona is something I want others to see and how it changes. The flowers inside the lightbulb symbolize growth and also my love for nature and plants. In my dorm room alone I have five plants sitting on the cramped windowsill next to my Keurig.

Once I got my main two outlines, I decided to add different textures and colors to the background. The colors I chose primarily reflected the pink of the background. I stuck to warm colors indicating my personality and bringing me happiness. Warm colors symbolize excitement and optimism to me and I wish to continue to see the world in this light. Now looking at the final product they remind me of sunrise and sunset colors. I added different textures sticking to the warm tones and the navy blue outline color. My last step was adding small details, first I drew some squares. The parallelograms represent the box that society is and how I wish to think outside the box. Being a geometric shape with straight and sharp edges it displays how I expected life to be linear and straightforward. The clouds are my realization that I can achieve what I imagine and should strive to be better than my old self, always trying to improve. The flowers connect me to my home. They represent my mother and our love for plants and gardening. Whenever my mom used to be on long calls with her family in India, she would doodle so many flowers on some notepad, and it is a habit I picked up over the years.

Going back to what Erving Goffman said about how humans curate an image of themselves to show society, I feel that people are less likely to show their true selves due to that meaning they show their vulnerability. In the video, he mentions the masks we have for others to see, my mask I believe is one of showing I am constantly okay and fine. The image I sketched, represents the complexities of myself in an easy-to-understand way. While we will always try to conform to some ideal, we must understand not everyone will accept us and we should be happy with who we are. I wish for others to see me like warm energy, someone they can approach with their issues and find comfort with me. With the creative and happy nature, I have always been excited to get my hands dirty and try the next new thing. I also want to realize that nothing is perfect and normal. Social constructs should not hold me down and I can curate any version of myself I desire. This assignment made me think beyond the face value in which you see yourself and others and in the end, I found a final product that I truly love.