Author: Annique Smith

The first-years in IMY 120 put their Photoshop skills to good use by creating a self-portrait that describes an aspect of their personality. They needed to use at least 15 different images to create the composition. The best submissions are displayed below (in no particular order) along with a description of the self-portrait from the student.

Francesca Strydom

I am an adventurous person and love trying new things that excite me. Many of the activities shown in the artwork are things I enjoy doing, such as hiking and snowboarding, and the rest are all on my bucket list. Even though the way to get to all the activities is through the mountains (and can seem difficult), it is worth it to persevere though the hard times to experience something so exciting, this is a metaphor for how I live my life. And finally, I like space which is why I integrated the space looking sky.

Ayaaz Street

My self-portrait’s main idea is to represent my curiosity, thirst for adventure and love for sci-fi and fantasy. This is shown as my self-portrait because my curiosity is shown by the man looking into the night sky with his telescope, he is shown to be search for his dreams. Another aspect would be the location and tent shows my thirst for adventure and love for travel, this is also symbolized by the Sagittarius sign in the sky as this sign is known for its adventurous spirit and love of travel. The final aspect would be the mysterious objects like the UFO abducting people, the dragon flying by the moon and the Sagittarius sign in the sky, these all show my love for sci-fi and fantasy and further represents me as I am a Sagittarius and the dragon is Toothless from How To Train Your Dragon which is one of my favourite animated movies.

Miguel Rebelo

The main idea of my self-portrait is the core belief that I hold that books are magical and are able to influence our realities. This self-portrait is representative of me because books are one of my main passions in life. I am studying publishing which means that I will be able to utilise, and direct, the “magic” that books possess. The self-portrait also contains other parts of me such as my love for writing and coffee.

Alexa Pettitt

The main idea of my self portrait is to communicate that I am a day dreamer, that I am able to come up with other worldly scenarios to keep myself entertained and satisfy my need for creativity. This represents me as it represents how I think and how I process life without getting bored. This expresses the child-like quality I still possess as I still dream of a world of magic, I still remain positive and see the brighter side of things even if its near impossible. I escape through my thoughts and they are what shape me into who I am, they impact how I cope, how I stay awake during the most excruciating lectures (COS) and how I am determined to keep creativity alive in my life.

Lakshita Padiachey

The main idea of my composition is to represent myself through my love for art and being creative. I am creative and love art. I relate to Frida Kahlo and Vincent Van Gogh because they would paint self-portraits in a non-traditional sense to not represent their physical appearance but their emotional state. The lines, curves, colors and techniques that they used represented their inner self more so than their outer self. Hence, I created a merge of them with their artworks to show my love for art and how art is a way for me to express myself emotionally. I also represented my love for both fine art and architecture through the cathedrals and various artworks.

Benjamin Osmers

The main idea of my self-portrait is to showcase two sides of my personality/thinking. One
side is logical and analytical, where the other is very creative. I am a photographer; hence the self-portrait contains a photo of my taking photos. I am very adventurous and love the outdoors, hence the mountains. I have a mechanical engineering degree, hence the equations inside of the aurora in the sky. I like the idea of our world seeming very surreal at times; thus, I have added the aurora. The spaceship, moon, space boots and flag on moon represents my lifelong dream of becoming an astronaut. My creative side is represented by the overall dreamlike look of the composition. My head is cracked open and inside is a collection of different color’s. This, along with the streaks of color above my head also show my creative side.

Rhyne Murray

The main idea is to convey my two personalities as well as show how my life is more on the tranquil side of things, whilst watching anime with friends. The right side indicates my calm and collective side with the lake and trees as well as my love for Japanese traditions.
The left side portrays my dark and mysterious side with the unsteady waves and dark mountains and somewhat of a rough life I had through my young days. And the middle where my friend and I watch television is my closet weeb side (love for anime) and the volleyballs behind our heads shows my active side playing volleyball.

Michel Mampa

The main idea that I’ve come up with for the project is to portray that I am a creative and I have an artist’s perspective. The artwork that I have created represents an idea of how I view things in reality. Instead of viewing in black and white and solving problems logically, most of the times I tend to do things creatively and artistically. In the artwork I showed how the general pictures look like in reality and have showed how I perceive see them.