Give me a paintbrush, canvas, and some tubes of oil paint and I would be willing to paint a portrait of anyone. Why? Because it’s easy to look at someone and paint what you see. But using your words to create a portrait of someone is much harder. For me, it’s nearly impossible. Because I’m not a writer and I’m absolutely horrible at describing things and I can’t accurately say what I want. To me, a picture says everything. The saying is true; a picture is worth 1,000 words.
But if I were to use my words to paint a portrait of a Japanese person I would paint a portrait of someone I know, so that I could be accurate when it comes to my description. My portrait would be of my old roommate, Yuriko Nishiguchi. She’s quiet and can be rather shy, and when you first meet her she can come off as a rather cold person who is a bit indifferent, so when I think of her I see soft pastel colors. But she’s also a really strong person because she is able to deal with hard times, such as the death of her father. She never seems to get too stressed because she can look at a situation from a calm perspective, so I would give her a pose that’s coming from below her to lift her up and make her seem a bit stoic.
When I asked her how she would paint a portrait of herself, as a Japanese person she said that she would just do purikura to show that she’s just a typical Japanese girl. And when I asked to her what kind of picture (from my collection of photos I have taken while in Japan) she would use to show who she is she chose the 2nd picture I have posted.
This just shows that our perspectives are just so different and it’s rather hard to have an accurate portrait of anyone.
I like this post a lot - you are a much better writer than you give yourself credit for. I like the portraits as well - they show two very different sides to your friend. I would like to read more.
ReplyDelete