Unveiling the Inner Artist: InterArts Cabinet of Curiosity

A Gift For Faith

By Gillianne Nugent

For my third submission to our class’ cabinet of wonder, I decided to create my gift for Faith. I definitely took a bit of time to think of what I wanted to give to her, but I did know that I definitely wanted to channel my creativity into something unique. A regular portrait did not feel like enough, and I did not want to do her dirty, as I tend to with other paintings of actual living people. I remembered back to an art class I took in high school where I drew only some features of some of my favorite actors, but focused on enough specificities so that they would be recognizable without the rest of the face. Since I have been working a lot in collage recently, I decided to combine a bit of my previous project formats to make a bit of a hodgepodge of Faith.

I first sketched out the pieces of Faith’s face using a multitude of images of her from different angles. Then, I used my gouache paints, watered down quite a bit, to color in her rosy cheeks and blue green eyes. I purposely left some parts in between the pieces of her face empty to represent things I have yet to discover about all of the intersections of Faith. Finally, I outlined some parts with my trusty micron pen to make the lines stand out. I also used a white gel pen to emphasize the highlights.

I do not know Faith, my fellow interartist who lives down the hall, on a very deep level, so for me, the bits of her that are depicted represent the little things that I do know of her. For example, she is sweet and kind. She likes theater, and she is easy to talk to. I must be on the same schedule as her, because I often see her in the morning when I am in the bathroom brushing my teeth.

These are all surface level things; I do not yet know a lot of deeper more profound things that make Faith who she is. I hope that in the coming years at Trinity I can get to know Faith better, because I consider her a friend!

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