Today, our reading task was to use a medium of our choice to create an image that portrays one of the main characters. I decided to choose Isabel because she is my favourite character so far. She is 11 years old and lives in Havana, Cuba in 1994. Isabel is skinny, with brown skin and dark hair. She also has freckles, but I found it challenging to add freckles to her portrait.
First, I found an image online that I thought best portrayed Isabel's features, including her brown skin and dark hair. I copied that image and then used google drawings and the eye dropping tool to create my own image, tracing the one I found online. The two main lines I used were polyline and scribble.
Initially, I had created a young girl that I thought Isabel would look like, until I realised I was thinking about what she would might look like in 2020. In Chapter 1 in the novel 'Refugee', it briefly describes Isabel as having a lot in common with the dirty, lanky kitten she is feeding. After remembering this, I decided to change small details in my image.
Isabel lives in Cuba, in 1994. Her family are poor, and there isn't much money or food in Cuba during this time. The dictator in Cuba was Castro Fidel, and he didn't allow Cuban's to leave the country, nor did he provide the necessary support they needed for day-to-day living. In a following chapter, Isabel goes with her father and grandfather to collect their food rations for the day, and she stands on the corner playing her trumpet in the hopes of earning some pesos. I thought about this for a while, and decided that Isabel's appearance would have been very simple and natural, as there wouldn't have been any luxury items for her to buy. So, I removed her earrings, her blush, and her headband to create a more realistic portrait.
Do you think Isabel would have worn a jacket, like in my picture? Perhaps her family were too poor to afford such clothing, or perhaps the weather conditions meant she didn't need one. What do you think?
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