Week Five- A Piece for Someone Else

Autistic Graffiti for Quan, 2010
 Pencil Drawing/Colored Pencil on Sketch Paper

I started with sketch paper, because I was in my sketch book trying to come up with some kind of image for this concept.  I immediately thought of how I might rebel against my peers or family if they couldn't understand me; that's when I thought of graffiti art. It's always been considered a taboo especially for adolescents. I used pencil to first draw the the letters being spray painted, and the can. After that I began drawing the brick background. To bring in some color, I chose colored pencils; blue, orange, yellow, pink, green and purple for the word "autism". I used several shades of brown for the brick background. I used purple and grey for the spray can. 

Quan Henderson is a close friend of mine that loves writing poetry. Quan asked me to create an image for his poem "Picasso's Love Child". In the poem he talks about a young autistic girl that has an innate artistic talent, but struggles to find herself because no one can see past her disability. I wanted to show a rebellious side to the art of the autistic girl; it's a way to show herself in a new light and create a voice for herself and make that voice heard by everyone that does not see her abilities. The word being spray painted on the brick wall is "autism". Graffiti is a creative outlet that some people use just to rebel against a specific concept, or idea that they disagree with.