Courage and a couch: A Junior Self-Portrait Illustration by Nicholas Guerrero (2012)

My initial idea for my illustration was to have a depiction of my habit to self criticize and simultaneously help others, I was going to some type of symbol of aid, and weighted down by its criticisms and flaws, but ultimately I determined that my courage and laziness was the best imagery. What I wanted to do was take an image of a lion, or courage, and put it into an instance of laziness. To emphasize this point I had the lion sitting on a couch, just like a couch potato. Considering Lions are usually lounging about anyways it wasn't such a far stretch for this piece. I like this piece not only because I put a lot of work into it, but also because ironically I had to fight my laziness to finish it.

To create this piece I used Adobe illustrator, and it took a while. I first started out tracing the outline of both the lion and the couch. Once positioned, I began to color the lions face. I wanted to do it in a more personnel way, so I took the general shade of an area of the lion and I the painted that area, it was different from most other ways of doing it but I think in the end it worked out the best for me.