The Constrained Key: A Junior Self-Portrait Illustration by Kiran Kothuri (2012)

In my Illustration, I wanted to communicate the hypocrisy of my laziness. In my illustration, the key represents myself, the ball and chain represents my laziness dragging me down, and the stars represent my ambitions. I wanted to show how I felt about being lazy, as it only hinders one's capabilities and potential. I thought depicting a personified key chained down would effectively communicate my idea, as each person is capable of overcoming their own laziness.

I started by thinking of various ways of depicting a trapped object that had the potential to free itself. I first thought of a key in a cage, but realized that it would be hard to depict ambitions with that. Then I came up with the concept of a key weighted down by a ball and chain, which would give me more freedom to depict other things around it. It then became clear to me that stars would be perfect to represent ambitions, and started to work on it. I first drew a rough sketch on paper, then revised it and smoothed it out. I then scanned the sketch, and imported it into Adobe Illustrator. From there, I used a Wacom Tablet and used the Pen Tool in Illustrator to trace over the scanned image. Then, I filled in the colors and added the background, and finally exported the file.