To Drown In Ones Own Blood

This is a symbolic self-portrait created using Ibis Paint X on the Ipad.

It depicts me -the artist- in a pool of blood, bleeding from the eyes, mouth, and nose. The blood is bright red and not shaded in order to give it a surreal look, since this is intended to be symbolic rather than just gore. I encourage all who look at my art to interpret it as they wish, and I dislike the idea of one true interpretation. however, my intended meaning of this painting was to represent sensory overload. When things get too stressful, everything starts to feel "too much" and it feels to me a lot like drowning. Rather than drowning in a liquid, I feel that I instead am drowning in my own body. Drowning in my own blood.

to create this, I started by taking reference photos, one of the expression and one of the hair. Which I then edited together to create the best reference photo for the drawing. Then I sketched the face shape and key features using a mixture of referencing and tracing to get the most accurate sketch. After that, I painted on top of the sketch using the Soft Pastel brush in the drawing program.