Grace Florence
 Dispair and Dismay


Research Dossier
Fall 2024




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This week I wanted an outlet for my emotions. The election had just happened and I felt a deep sense of despair that I wanted to visualize in one way or another. I thought it would be interesting to add my own visual distortion to this process considering how personal this feeling felt at the time. To do this, I started sketching with a reference photo and the allowed my mind to fill in the blanks for the shading and adjustments. It was intersting to watch the figure slowly start to look more like the way I view myself, despite the model I began this drawing referencing looking nothing like me. I want to keep playing with this form of distortion and think it’s an apt visual translation of my unique perspective.
Whenever I begin to feel a deep sense of dispair and hopelessness, I imagine this little figure in the vast darkness of my head, being illuminated by a single spotlight. I have been wanting to find a way to visually represent this feeling for a while but wasn’t confident in my drawing skills to execute it in a way that would properly convey this feeling. Despite this hurdle, I thought it would be more interesting to let my mind fill in the blanks and lean into the lack of technical drawing training. This caused some unruly distortions and improper shading that actually added intrigue to the conversation in my opinion. It also allowed for a personal touch without being so focused on conveying an image exactly as I see it.





















































This ended up being a very medatative process that allowed me to work through my emotions while still tugging at the heart of what my thesis is. I want to do some more drawing from memory and intuition to see exactly what distortions I tend to exaggerate within the human form. I also am interested in how closely those distortions represent my own figure as opposed to the distortions being over exaggerations of my own insecurities. 








Process photos leading up to the final, color adjusted, composition.






Final Composition