Auras

When drawing anyone, especially friends or those who you hold closest to you, it can feel impossible to properly capture their essence, In my own art, I typically keep graphite portraits clean cut and avoid adding color, thus providing little insight into the inner character or personality of my subjects. For my project, I wanted to not only share portraits of two women I admire, but I wanted to break this habit.

Women and femmes are hardly given the opportunity to fully show off their shining selves at first glance, so I wanted viewers to see these portraits the same way I see these friends—the left, Aires Miranda-Antonio, the right, Seo Young Lee. As I could not hope to sum up an entire person in a few words, I will not try to do so in writing about what these drawings and these people mean to me. Instead, I chose to gild halo-like embellishments onto their portraits to more properly display their auras.

Auras by Caleigh Andrews