First project of the New Semester

Now that the new semester has begun, there will be a lot of postings from me, and this is my first Drawing and Painting project: "Hero, Heroine, Heretic, Celebrity, or Classified" Portrait.
I decided to do a self-portrait of me. This way, I could learn more about myself in the process. It's all about self-discovery... So knowing that I love drawing chubby people and old people, I worked on some sketches (above)

Below is a collage I made of my various references. Pavarotti is present in this collage because one of my earlier ideas was to draw a celebrity portrait of Pavarotti as an owl serenading the moon. He just really looks like an owl: his curled out face-fuzz, his sharp nose, his squarish face, the shape of his mouth when he sings...but I digress. John and Yoko were here for the same reason. Not the owl reason. The portrait reason.

This first sketch is me as a much fatter child than my actual childhood-photo chubbiness. I based it off of Thomas Gainsborough's "The Blue Boy" because that portrait was the first painting that I had ever seen in person in a museum, and although I never truly new why it was considered so famous, the image has stayed with me since. I have yet to add the old man stuffed toy.
This sketch is of me flinging my old man stuffed toy in the air. I think I will work on this sketch a little more... I did want to base this one off of Eric Carle's "Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me" video. I think I will end up zooming the image out and have me standing outside in the moonlight, throwing the stuffed toy into the air, kind of like the moondance the girl had with the moon sliver.
This sketch is of me peacefully sleeping in the woods, and my old man stuffed toys are covering the path that I took to find solitude. I guess I though of the path in the forest opening up like an orange peel and my stuffed dolls are rolling the peels back over the open path.
This sketch is a lineup of different girls and their various Barbie/Bratz/female plastic dolls. All competing, all comparing and all in style, and there's me with my squishy old man doll. I found that it is very important to see for myself what I am interested in rather than liking something because its popular. To find something that you love by yourself will make it all the more meaningful. On a related but somewhat unrelated note, it just goes to show that a happy artist is one that does what he/she loves, and doesn't allow herself to be consumed solely by what the main demographic is interested in seeing. For if this is the case, there will be a lack of passion, which I find very important to my work.

As a student that is worried about my future as an artist and if "they will like me or hate me," I have to remind myself of this constantly.