For some, drawing a circle is difficult.

Now imagine turning that circle into a full-fledged portrait ready for competition.

Twenty-six Independence artists did just that for their pieces in the Visual Art Scholastic Event competition.

“Like V.A.S.E, they love big portraits of people. That’s like what they go for. That’s what both of my pieces are,” senior Katie Todd said.

Even when judges prefer a certain type of piece, artists still added their own creative twist to it.  

“What inspired them is… well, the self-portrait, myself. But my black and white ink piece, just really like my imagination. I just kind of put it on paper,” senior Siena Marek said.

Turning that idea into artwork is not that easy.

“Sometimes like when you start off on a piece, it starts off really good and you have all of these ideas. But then you kinda get like, ‘I hate this’,”  Todd said.

For some artists, it was hard to capture the finer details.

“Then for Kei-Ayzia’s piece…it was really hard getting like each curl in there exactly. So starting over and re-doing and starting over and re-doing made it really difficult to get that part down,” senior Ann Woodard said.

“I would just say trying to get all of the highlights and the darks in the picture because his face is weird and everything. The forehead was both light and dark at the same time and I had to capture it like in total balance so it didn’t look cartoonish,” junior Matthew Melendez said.

Once all revisions were made and the final product was completed, some say the hassle was worth it.

“The end is by far the best. That’s when it’s like rewarding. It’s like seeing it come to life, especially when you’re doing people. Because at first, they look kinda sick because they’re like pale or they’re purple or they’re half finished. But, at the end when it starts to look like a photograph, when it starts to look like the person you’re painting, that’s when it’s like really rewarding,” Todd said.

    
Their pieces will be judged at the state V.A.S.E competition tomorrow, April 29th.