For my illustration, the assignment was first to, of course, brainstorm an idea. The main requirement was that it was your best, or most prominent personality trait. The twist, however, was that the trait had to have a downside. A part of the trait that was a weakness. For example, if your trait was that you're really good at math, then perhaps the downside is that you're not very athletic.
A main part of the assignment was symbolism. Of course we can't actually write down our traits and downsides, so we draw them instead. Different people have different ideas of how to go about showing instead of telling, and a lot of pictures in the class had incredibly unique and original ideas. I also learned a lot in this project about working until you're satisfied with the product, not just working until you're "done." I had to recreate my picture over and over for myself to be finished with the product, and even then I made numerous changes to it and subtle modifications. Even though it was a ton of work, I thought this project was awesome.
Communication is one of the greatest gifts that mankind has acquired from nature. Humans are the only creatures with an actual language. I use this gift to the limit. I am a very outspoken person - Letting yourself be heard is very important to me. The speech bubbles and text in my picture show my love for speech. These simple symbols are put in the brain representing my thought processes, showing how close they are to my own being and how they create my persona.
The contradiction in my illustration is the speech bubbles, letters and words falling into the cogs that make up my thoughts. This shows that oftentimes my need to speak up often gets the better of me, and I tend to blurt out things without thinking about them. The speech bubbles thus struggle for dominance over my thoughts and collide with the cogs and gears that make up my more intricate brain functions, morphing intelligent thought at the top to less intelligent speech at the bottom. Hopefully one day my brain and my mouth will try to work together.
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