A few weeks ago I bought an art journaling inspiration card deck. In addition to the cards it has a small interactive journal to go along with it. I was giving it a once over, simply seeing what the cards had to say when I came to the card about Jean-Michel Basquiat. A graffiti style artist popular in the 80s (until he OD-ed), Basquiat had a very impressionist/expressionist sort of style predominately pointing out racial and political issues.

   The card called for completing a contour outline of your face and filling each quadrant with your journaling, after perusing examples of his work online. I went online to look at his work. Instead of completing the suggested journal page, I was inspired by one of his pieces, to create my own artwork. I decided to use my new Crayola Portfolio water soluble oil pastels and my fairly newish watercolor set from Micheal's.

  The piece that inspired me.


 Source


  And here is my version (so far anyway).

 
  I screwed up on his ear. While both fretting over it and trying to figure out how to fix it I realized I could gauge his ear. Other than that I'm fairly happy with it. Part of me likes it as is, but part of me wants to add a bit more like in the original. I'm not sure what to do yet. In the mean time I think I may be working on some more abstract/impressionist portraits.