Qualia

As the saying goes, we do not see the world as it but as we are, or how we want it to be for each of us have varying feelings and experiences. I may not fully understand and cannot properly explain the philosophical term qualia itself, but I chose it nonetheless as the title for my artwork, a half-body, side-view portrait of my classmate (dang I forgot her name), because for me it encompasses all the mental and emotional states I’ve been through before, during the process of drawing itself in the classroom, finishing it at home and even while typing down this paper, and yeah, even while reminiscing this afterwards and as long as this cross my conscious thought, maybe, definitely. 

~My Artwork~

Moving on, explaining what needs to and can be explained, I will start with what I did to come up with how it looks right now. What I did was I took a photo of my subject first then from that I copied the outline to the felt paper though I really had a hard time starting since estimating the adequate size was kinda difficult.

I guess I made the subject not big enough for it did not occupy a larger portion of the paper, and somehow for this matter, I believe the subject’s size relative to the whole paper was very important since it greatly affects the kind of impact it makes. 

And since nothing can be changed with the subject’s overall size, I proceeded with the coloring of the subject first. I just imitated the pattern of my subject’s shirt, a white sleeveless with pink floral pattern. 

For the skin color, I used the color brown first then used the yellow-brown color as a second layer, doing it in a circular motion which in effect gave a rough feeling, it looks like it’s carved out of wood and the impressions I get from looking at it is kinda sad which I hope to elaborate later.

I especially like my subject’s hair, how it was tied up in a bun (since personally I don’t know how to do that with my long hair before) and how only the little bun (the knot) was the only part died with color brown, therefore the rest was still black.

I did fine, for me, with the black part, but when I tried playing with the right colors for the bun, I unfortunately overdid it so I had no choice but to layer it with black but in the end I added elements of white to compensate for it (how frustrating!). 

As for the background designs and/or colors, for the upper part I used the colors red, black and white and ‘stroke’ the pastels in a circular motion trying to mimic the neurotic wirings of the brain, while for the lower part I used the same three set of colors but this time I kinda combined them through overlaying them with one another, hoping to achieve the intestinal look of the brain as we see it with naked eyes. 

Now for the questions why or what’s up with all these brain-like thing-a-majigs popping up with this portrait artwork,  what I’m trying to convey is the general meaning of the word qualia itself as I mentioned the cliché above – the way things seem to us. Defining it is really hard for me but as an example, the way my subject feel when she consciously know that I am drawing her is an emotional quale, the way she sees things around her that time is her visual quale, how the surroundings sound to her is her auditory quale and etc. It seems that she knows nothing more intimately than her own qualia, let the entire world be just some big illusion, and yet what the figment is made of (for her) will be the qualia of her hallucinatory experiences. 

As I’ve said, I tried to really give the background brain-like features, and as you can see my subject is inside all of these. For these qualia things are intrinsic consciousness she undergoes, which she may speak of or share with us or keep all to herself.  

Overall, it may give a somewhat serious, gloomy face, because for me, one’s greatest battle is his battle with his inner self. For we know ourselves that we’re really boring and full of contradictions, insecurities and flaws.  And of course, that’s just for me. My own  qualia of things the viewer might not be aware of.