Portfolio 2: Composing with the Visual Mode + Rationale

For my visual mode composition, I wanted to relate it to what I wrote about in my Theorizing with the Visual Mode assignment. Towards the end of the paper, I wrote about how idealized representations of women in art and media contribute towards negative self body image for many women. I wanted to explore this further, so I drew two "self-portrait"s: one of my actual self, and one of my "ideal" self.

The real me is on the left, drawn in black and white, whereas the "ideal" me is on the right, colored in using copic markers. I chose to do this because I wanted the ideal representation to be more colorful and visually striking, with the real me being a bit more plain but realistic.
For the "ideal" version of me, I also included labels that detailed exactly what aspects of myself I wished were different, such as a smaller waist and cooler hair. This wasn't for any artistic reasons, just for the convenience of other viewers.

I started out with a rough sketch of the "real" me on the back of an old worksheet, and then worked from that by redrawing it with pencil on better art paper, adding the figure of the "ideal" me on the right, also in pencil. I then traced over the pencil with a 0.3mm ink pen. Once the ink was dry, I erased the pencil so that I had clean outlines. After that, I used a brush pen to fill in the parts that needed to be black with black ink. Finally, I used copic markers to color in the "ideal" me, and then added the labels.