Erin's drawing in Kyle's book "I am...."

"I am... Erin."

Kyle's sketchbook theme was "I am..."

I bounced around with some ideas but kept coming back to this idea of being unique but also not at all.


I chose to represent that by using a tangible evidences of uniqueness: our fingerprint. I took a photo of my actual thumb to look at the lines. My life and experiences are mine.


This is paired with the universe and outer space since I am also a part of some thing much bigger. In the scheme of things, I am just a blip on the radar of time. And on a literal level... all life is made of space dust.


The materials I used are also a bit of exacting and chaotic. I used Masking fluid to add the lines of the finger. This creates crisp lines.

Peeling off the mask

Detail of texture made by adding salt on top of wet ink  and letting it dry

Detail of the moon and back ground

I then painted over it with ink, water, batik dye... and then covered it with Salt. Each layer interacts with the previous layer, and the Salt creates a final texture, slowly, as it dries. I have some control over how it turns out, but the nature of water, paper, and mineral (salt), ultimately say how the surface will look. This fits my personality. I can be precise in many ways, but also flexible or full of unrest. Oh, to be human!!