Wow, a realistic drawing, on Wattpad, in this modern, tumblr art time? Crazy. Sorry for the sarcasm, but i will admit that most art i see from artists around my age/tumblr artists are usually the same stylized cartoon aesthetic. Which is totally fine, but it's always good to practice some more realism to better understand the simplicity of stylized art. What am i talking about? Idk. Anyway, this is a Segway of me admitted that this was an art class project, so i don't even follow my own advice.

Anyway, we had a portrait assigment on this fat ass paper, and we had to choose one celebrity to draw. I had many ideas of "hero" inspirations, all of them being musicians as that's a big part of my life, people like Billy Joe Armstrong, Dolores O'Riordan, Amy Lee, etc. love all of them dearly, but i didn't wanna mess up someone i really look up to that bad, and i always appreciated her style and essence so... Gwen Stefani!

I discovered No Doubt around a year ago after recognizing a song i remembered hearing when i was younger in a certain Marvel movie. I listened to Tragic Kingdom and immediately fell in love with that album, their music, and Gwen as an artist. She has great presence on stage and honestly exudes the definition of "cool", so after looking up some portrait references from the 90s (the time of No Doubt) i got to drawing.

I have almost no experience with portraits and struggle more with realism. From the experience i do have, it's definitely not the best, so going into this i was pretty worried. Still life is one thing, which i think i'm pretty decent at, but realistic portraits? Not pretty. However with some really helpful tips and strategies from our great teacher (i'm so lucky), i actually really enjoy the way this turned out. Obviously like any artist, it's not perfect and i still see flaws snd room for improvement, and at this point, the more i look at it, the more i'll hate it, but even with all that, i'm pretty proud of myself for not only pushing through and making something i'm happy with, but actually making it for the due date (which if you know me, that's even more shocking). And now i get a big portrait of an artist and a band i love and look up to! Enjoy! :)