Tara O’brien
From watching Tara’s talk I really like how she created her art around her own personal movement. From not getting enough representation of people with the same body shape as her own, as she described her self as a “fat lady” she wanted representation for all the other fat ladies who don’t see themselves in the media. However she talked upon not knowing her style, a problem I assume most new artists come into, personally I know I have not found my style. I was particularly interested in how she came to discover herself, she decided on making a portfolio on a style she had ventured in. I think the extremely smart part of this plan was that she used the platform that wasn’t representing her and people like her, to find herself. She asked the people of tumblr to send them their coping methods for how they handle their mental health. From this she made multiple drawings based on what people had said. I think this was really clever as she knew what she wanted her style to be after creating art of other people. The main thing that stuck out to me was what she spoke about in the end; she explained that she started to become worried in how her art looked to other people and other illustrators, yet she had to remind herself about what started her in the first place, creating art for people like her who were not represented, because she was not represented in the media and that she didn’t want others to feel like her, reminding her that the art work she was creating was not for other other people to judge, it was for her.