Kaining Huang ASA 115 Week 5 Art project

For week 5's " Race Traitor", we are asked to do a self portrait. My portrait is a sketch of myself, drawing with pencils. I was motivated to draw by sketch rather than using media because of one of my friend's advice. She told me that I studied how to do sketch in my childhood, so drawing sketch can better represent myself and my identity. I adopt her opinion by doing a sketch.

First, I picked a recent selfie of myself, which was photoed last month, when I joined a game of Chinese custom. I picked this photo because it fully represents my race. As a mono-racial person, I am very proud of my own identity and country. Then, I used pencil to sketch my face. In the last version, I did color for myself, but it seemed really bad, because I had forgotten the technique to color. Therefore, I reworked and gave up coloring. The sketch looked simple and clean for me. Also, being simple is also a virtue of China. I would like to include as many element as I can to represent my proudness of my own identity and respect to my own culture.

Because I am not a mixed race person, I consider that Chinese flag is the best symbol of representing my identity as well. Therefore, I used photoshop app: Picsart to combine the two pictures together in the North Eastern corner of my portrait. East is also where China locates on the Earth. By showing how I respect my own identity and culture, I would like to remind myself and anyone who may see my portrait that every identity and race deserves to be respecting. By admitting our own identities, we would also understand and respect others' races and culture, embracing differences and diversity of the society.