Freestyle Academy proudly presents

Coming Apart at the Seams: A Junior Self-Portrait Illustration by Parker Malachowsky (2012)

As my self-doubt leads to a fear of not having expectations met, I constantly exhaust myself in the attempt to suppress this fear. As seen in my illustration, it is like I am always carrying with me a briefcase, which holds many worlds inside. Of these worlds I have crafted, I know one will be satisfactory. However, carrying the weight of so many realms and planets leaves me tattered and torn just like the worn suitcase I must carry with me each day. Well, at least until the seams can no longer hold the contents, and the worlds come crashing down. But until then, I lug with me this burden and this suitcase in hopes that I will never been unprepared or inadequate. This idea began as just feeling bogged down in class while brainstorming due to carrying the massive load of too many tasks. As this developed into the suitcase/world idea, I still hadn't decided to make the suitcase old and worn-out. The ''coming apart at the seams'' idea came about later at the supportive comment of a fellow classmate regarding a poorly drawn line.

In order to create a sense of the suitcase's shabbiness, I tried to utilize curved lines and non-perfect angles. This created some challenges, as I still needed to use the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator to form a shape that could still be easily recognized as a suitcase. With both implied texture and the use of color, I was attempting to further show the poor conditions of the suitcase. However, with more precise lines and shapes and more saturated colors, I wanted to create a strong contrast between the two emphases of the photo (the suitcase and the globes). A goal of mine was to also have a strong balance of good and bad (smooth vs. rough, squiggly vs. straight, vibrant vs. dull, etc.) as to suggest that this quality is both my best and worst. The repetition of the globes in the illustration was also important to me, for I felt it important to suggest the monotony associated with this way of living.
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