Helium Guitar: A Junior Self-Portrait Illustration by Jacob Kidd (2012)

Musical composition and creation is a vital passion of mine that allows me to escape the stress of my everyday life. In my illustration, I express a particular perspective of how my escape is both a good and bad tendency of my character. The guitar symbolizes my own melodic guise. The balloon represents a positive direction- pulling my guitar to the skies, where creativity can flourish in the absence of outer disturbance from reality. However, my musical spirit can occasionally divert and withdraw me from obligations that are weighing down on the ground below me, portrayed particular by the darker clouds hanging in the sky.

I utilized Adobe Illustrator in order to construct this piece. Particularly using pen selection and free-hand drawing tools, I modified and refined specific images with a multitude of qualitative effects. The ground is grainy and pallid; the sky appears to have a cloth-like texture. Finally, I applied and manipulated shadow and lighting effects in certain areas to highlight and individualize important components of the illustration.