Freestyle Academy proudly presents

Bad Chinese Takeout: A Junior Self-Portrait Illustration by Kaye Yap (2012)

In this illustration, I am communicating my internal and external fears. My fear internally is that I'm scared of what my future holds. I'm constantly worried about what the future has to offer me; sometimes, I'm even worried about what tomorrow may hold. Externally, my fear is getting bad grades. I try very studiously in school and as I've heard before, hard work must pay off. But yet, I'm constantly worried that my hard work is not enough and I'll ultimately fail at school. I decided to portray both of these as a fortune cookie with the fortune having multiple letter ''F's.'' The fortune cookie represents the future while the fortune inside the cookie represents what I don't want to have in my future. This piece images what my biggest fear is and it shows my internal and external conflicts into one illustration. It represents myself as a hardworking girl who doesn't like to give up nor be let down.

Creating this illustration was difficult but yet it was also very fun. Tracing the fortune cookies was the easy part while brushing in strokes, lines, and different colors to make the fortune cookie look decently realistic and not one big yellow blob of color. Trying to make the cookie look more 3D and have form was also a difficult task. I had to use different shades of color and carefully outline where the shadows and depth of vision were. Learning how Adobe Illustration works was also very insightful as well as educational. Making a photograph come to a illustration was a very unique process that I'm glad i learned in freestyle.
Visitors 955