Asian American Female Portrait Illustrations

Illustrations for Solo Gallery Show, 2017

As part of my #100DAYSIANS solo show at Pearl River Mart in 2017, I did a portrait series of Asian American females to showcase faces of people I never saw growing up in mainstream Western media, from TV shows and movies to magazine spreads and advertisements. I also wanted the chance to practice drawing faces.

I initially chose to do these portraits in a non finito (unfinished) style since I thought it looked interesting and it gave me a chance to focus on layering in colors to achieve different skin tones. Non finito was originally a sculpting technique pioneered by Donatello, and later used by Michelangelo, to showcase how a figure is stuck within the block of material. Looking back on these portraits in 2022, perhaps the unfinished style lends itself to represent how Asian Americans are still often not seen as “whole” to Westerners, who are often stuck in their monolithic gaze.

Or more truthfully, hair is hard to draw and I’m lazy.

Portraits are all drawn with Prismacolor colored pencils on toned gray Strathmore sketch paper.