Surrealist Self Portrait

Finally I decided not to be lazy and actually make a new post- but school has started, so I kinda have the right to be lazy ;). So I'm gonna post my surrealist self portrait:

(^Full piece- for some reason when I took this with my camera the background came up as blue, but it's really supposed to be purple >:|)

Snnnaaakkkeeeessszzzzzzz...... O_o

I was actually really freaking out about what medium to use on this piece. At first I was gonna use watercolor pencil, then that didn't show up bright enough for my taste. I was tired of using paint at the time to. So I ended up using dry pastels even though I was really worried because I'm pretty used to things working out well, and when the skin colored pastel was making marks all over I didn't know what to do. Eventually I think I got over the "perfect, crisp" look and I remembered it's surreal- so I decided to go for it and put oranges and pinks in my skin. Overall, I'm super proud of this piece- and the fact that it's on display right now is awesome and one of my friends (who isn't in this class and didn't know what I was making) said, "whoa, that portrait totally looks like you- creepy..." then I laughed saying, "because it is me, and I made it!" haha. 

(So now I'll mention some background info about this piece): 
Most of you probably remember learning about Greek Mythology at some point, and how Medusa had snakes as hair. Well, since my giant fluffy fizzy hair is kinda "a focal point" and since my family has actually joked that when I wake up my hair "look's like Medusa" I decide to take that idea, and create something surreal about it. First of all, I knew that I was going to have my hair slowly transforming into snakes because "transformation" is a characteristic of surrealism. Secondly, the fact that there are snakes in my hair creates another characteristic- "dislocation." And, finally- the snakes are also somewhat "levitating" which is another characteristic. At first, I felt like it would look really interesting to have another eye in the upper right hand corner and have the yellow snake coiled around it and squeezing tears out of it. Then once I tried sketching out the floating eye, it bugged me a lot and there was too much extra space that was awkward to me. I ended up coming up with something relating to the symbolism of the snake- which also went well with my love for nature.

This is a great website for looking up symbolism and it mentions more about why I specifically chose the Sun, Earth, and Moon as the upper right focal point. 
http://www.whats-your-sign.com/snake-symbolic-meaning.html

So that was that. Now Imma post about my 6x6. :)