Seventeen Hours and a Selfie Later

When first given this project, Michael showed us a few examples.  I was very unimpressed by what he showed us.  Everything was bland, lacking detail.  There was too much left open to interpretation.  I knew I wanted to make my self portrait as detailed as possible.  

We had two guidelines:

1. Make a 8.5" x 11" self portrait. 

2. Only use the rectangle tool in Adobe Illustrator.

Sounds easy enough, right?

WRONG

I have dabbled in Photoshop and Illustrator in the past, so I thought that this would be a walk in the park. Psh, was I ever wrong.  I didn't realize how little I knew about Illustrator until I got about third seconds into the project.

So I looked around at my classmates and how they were doing it.  I listened.

*click click click click click*

*click click click click click click click*

*click click click click click click*

*click click click click*

Everyone around my was creating tiny little rectangles to creating light and shadow to make a million shapes form a face.  I thought to myself that making thousands of rectangles would go by quickly. Once I reached the ten hour mark and my face was still incomplete, I knew I wasn't going to bed that night.

Sure enough, click, drag, release, repeat x 100000000000 took a solid seventeen hours.  

However, I fully achieved my goal.  

I wanted the viewer to know that this was not a normal self portrait, that there must be something slightly off about this person.  But, I also wanted it to be absolutely clear that this was in fact my face.  The details in the T-zone translate that it is me, but the "larger" rectangles on the cheeks and neck and shirt give it a pixelated look.