Starting with the eyes, she roughly sketched them in place and then moved on to the other facial features. Once she had the nose, mouth, eyebrows and head shape down, she started shading in the skin tone, drawing the hair and adding the smaller details like freckles and wrinkles. The face was coming together – soon she would be able to start coloring it.
Despite having a brother that draws and a mother who is a makeup artist, sophomore Gabby Perdomo didn’t find her interest in art until the beginning of her freshman year when she took the Intro to Studio Arts class. However, in the short amount of time, art has become a huge part of her life.
“It’s just kind of become a relaxing thing to do for me.” Perdomo said. “If I’m bored with watching TV or talking to my friends it’s a way I can just do my own thing.”
Perdomo creates portraits both of herself and of her friends. To her, the medium isn’t as important as the color – she uses paint or colored pencil. Perdomo uses color in a unique way where the warm and cold colors correspond with the light and dark on the face.
“I’ve always liked a lot of colors,” Perdomo said. “Like if you look at my Instagram it’s really colorful, they just always kind of fascinated me.”
She started doing this color technique almost immediately when she started drawing portraits. Perdomo didn’t know anyone who uses colors the way she does. She didn’t even know that it was a technique used by many famous artists until she talked to art teacher Adam Finkelston, and he mentioned the technique called Fauvism.
After this conversation, she looked up Fauvism and found that it was a technique that Vincent Van Gogh and many other artists use.The technique blends several different colors to show warm vs. cold.
Just a few weeks ago, three of Perdomo’s portraits made it into the Crescendo Conservatory Art Show. Being accepted into the art show allowed Perdomo to see that this was more than just a hobby to her.
“It was a really big deal to me,” Perdomo said. “I knew that I needed to put myself out there more if I really wanted to make art a passion of mine.
These particular portraits are ones that she was paid to do. On a few occasions, people have paid Perdomo $30 to draw them in her individual style. Though Perdomo is unsure if art is something she wants to continue as a career, she is definitely considering having people pay her to draw their portraits as a side job in the future.