Step Into Art 2026

In my portrait, I am wearing a designed outfit that I wore to go to the movies. There are blue flowers on my sweater and they really pop out. I'm wearing pants that also pop out and make me look beautiful. My favorite accessory is the silver shiny bracelet I have on. It reminds me of my Grandma that passed away. This reminds me of her because when she used to babysit me, she would always put jewelry on when my mom would buy her some. She would also let me wear it sometimes only if I would be careful with it.

The part that brought me joy was drawing my body and talking to friends, focusing, and asking the teacher if it looks good. One thing I want you to see is the hard work I put in and the details and the colors. I dedicate this portrait to my mom, niece, and Gio Swaby with gratitude for the way they inspired me and how they reminded me that I'm a beautiful queen. Come closer and notice that you're a queen. The way Gio Swaby changed my idea of being an artist is that she made me think you can make a mistake and turn it into something that would look good with your project.  

In my portrait, I chose to wear jeans and a shirt. I personally love blue. It makes me confident and beautiful. I also chose blue because I love Marina, a musical artist, so I wanted it to be blue like one of my favorite albums by her called “Princess of Power.” It makes me feel like I'm worth living and I love that she is so confident. She is one of my role models. One of my favorite songs is “Metallic Stallion.” I chose a blue and gold swirl because the shirt I was wearing had blue and white swirls but there weren't any so I did blue and gold because it was the closest to white. I picture myself wearing this on a normal day like on a sunny warm spring day going to work with my mom and seeing my dad after he picks me up.

My favorite and one of the hardest parts of my portrait is the sparkles. I burned myself with hot glue a lot of times but I think it was worth it. I really hope that everyone notices how much work I put in my artwork. I put blood, sweat, tears, and a LOT of skin. Honestly it was really hard to make my skin tone and I tried to make it as accurate as possible. I made sure that some of the hot glue showed because these portraits are based on an artist named Gio Swaby and she always made the imperfections show because nothing is perfect.

We met Gio Swaby on Zoom. I was so scared and excited. She was very nice and loved all of our portraits. She is a great inspiration and person. When you look at my portrait, I hope you feel like it doesn't matter how you look or what you're wearing, but it matters how much you worked on it and the person's heart and effort.

In my portrait, I was wearing a magenta shirt and orange pants which looked like a skirt. I picked magenta as the color of my shirt because magenta makes me feel cool, pretty, and confident. I also chose orange as the color of my pants because it makes me feel like I matter. It makes me feel like I matter because when it was my birthday, I wore an orange dress and it made everyone notice and they were telling me compliments. The patterns I chose for my shirt and my pants were like flowers and plants. I picked those patterns because it reminded me of nature and I love nature. My favorite accessory is the beads on my hair in my portrait. It was my favorite accessory because beads make me feel happy. I took little balls that had holes in them and used them as beads for my hair. In these “going out clothes,” I would imagine myself at a party. Usually if there is a birthday party or other parties that you don’t have to dress nice for, I would wear the clothes I chose for my portrait because I would feel more comfortable.

One of the greatest challenges I had working on my portrait was my skin color. It was hard for me to use the perfect matching skin color of my skin and I had a lot of troubles with it. But eventually I found my true skin color and I was proud of it. What brought me joy was my hair because it was easy for me to get the perfect hair color and easy for me to get the perfect colors for my beads as well. When I saw Gio Swaby’s work, I got inspired and so I was trying to be creative just like Gio Swaby. The color I chose for my clothes reminded me of my mom because her favorite colors are magenta and orange.

I love the colors in my portrait because they are bright. I am very fond of the color blue. It's my 2nd favorite color because it reminds me of the sky and I really love nature as well. I love nature because everything is so free and peaceful. Nature is carefree. It's anywhere and everywhere, it does what it likes without thinking twice about it. Sometimes nature is dull and hidden, and other times it is loud, big, and out in plain sight. That's why I also chose a leaf pattern to go over a piece of my outfit. I chose to put shiny beads and glitter so it sticks out! I put a shiny string around the rim of my portrait so when light reflects on it, it will shine. I placed thick gold lace on the outer rim of my portrait so it's seen by everyone!

I am really inspired by Gio Swaby’s portraits because she shows that something does not have to be perfect and have zero flaws to be beautiful and stick out in a crowd. When I grow up, I want to be an artist, so Gio Swaby’s art pieces really inspire me to not give up on my dream despite the struggles and hard times, and to keep going to achieve anything I want in life. Even though many times I've struggled while doing art, I remembered mistakes are a part of learning and getting better at something, so I keep trying and practicing until I get it. What Gio Swaby said to us in the meeting we had with her recently really inspired me to focus on my art and to express my creativity in all types of ways. While I'm doing my art I feel like a bird. I can go anywhere, be anything, or do anything. Doing art makes me feel free like I'm in another world. I love all types of art! I have had many experiences with all types of art but so far I think this one is the most detailed piece I've done. This is why Gio Swaby’s portraits inspire me.

In my portrait, I am wearing a blue sweater with gold vine designs, and blue jeans with gold flower designs. I love the color gold in my portrait because I like the color gold, and I feel like gold goes well with any color. The gold patterns I chose express that sometimes I can be wild like nature and shine bright like gold. Based on the description of my clothes, if I went somewhere in these clothes, I would imagine myself at a festival because festivals have bright colors like my clothes. I also want you to imagine me at a festival waving my arms in the crowd and having fun in my colorful clothes.

One of the challenges I had working on this portrait was putting the hot glue for the lace around the canvas and my cutout because I was scared to burn myself and I thought it would burn at first. I had a lot of fun matching my skin tone and hot gluing things because I also love to use hot glue. When you look at my portrait, I want you to hear my giggles when I was having fun making my portrait. While you're looking, come closer and notice that it’s fun to make art. I hope you realize how creative you can get while making your art. When making art, take your time and make sure you don't let other people control what you draw, or paint or anything else. What brought me joy was using hot glue and painting the background because it's fun to me and I love how nice the portrait turned out. My portrait is a love letter to all creative artists, and I want those artists to know that it's your choice and your imagination. I dedicate this portrait to my mom with gratitude for how she raised and took care of me. 

In my going out clothes, I imagine myself close to home, just walking around taking in deep breaths, maybe by the ocean. One of the representations in my self-portrait is my culture. My culture is very important to me. If you look closely at my shirt pattern, you’ll see that this is close to my African side. Gold is very important to my culture as it represents immense wealth, power, and high social status.

Two of the dedications are my family and friends: My family for supporting me and helping me represent my culture through the way I walk, talk and the way I hold my head up high, and my friends for helping me not get discouraged for how it looked at first because like Gio Swaby said, “imperfections are beautiful.” 

In my portrait, the colors I chose for my outfit were green with gold patterns as the shirt and white with patterns as the pants. I chose these colors and patterns because green and white are one of my favorite color combinations, and also because it reminds me of how beautiful nature is. My favorite accessory on my portrait is the gold patterns on my green shirt because it reminds me of when on my 5th birthday I was wearing gold and white while my grandpa, mom, dad, and siblings sang happy birthday for me and my twin brother. When you look at my portrait, I want you to feel all of the joy and laughter I was surrounded with on my 5th birthday.

The part of the portrait that was easiest and especially fun was choosing the colors of the background and painting the background. The most challenging part of the portrait for me was the skin and clothes. The skin and clothes were challenging for me because I couldn't find a good match for my skin. For the shirt, I accidentally put the shirt the wrong way on the portrait. What brought me joy while creating my portrait is when we got to choose the colors for what we were wearing in the portrait. It brought me joy because it let me express my creativity and I got to choose my favorite color. What I love most about Gio Swaby’s art is the vibrant colors she uses when it comes to making a portrait about herself or her family. The thing about Gio Swaby’s portraits that inspires me the most is how she leaves little imperfections on purpose. This inspires me because I always thought that art had to be perfect. Gio Swaby showed us that our art doesn't have to be perfect by leaving little imperfections in her portraits.  

In my portrait I am wearing a pink shirt and skirt, and my beads are pink and purple. I love the colors because they are very floral and bright, and the patterns I chose represent love and unity. I think floral patterns mean love and unity because when you love someone, you give them flowers. You don't just give them one flower, but you give them a whole bouquet of flowers and those flowers put together in a bundle represent unity. My favorite accessory is my glasses because they remind me of seeing clearly and taking the right path in life. Not everyone gets the chance to make these portraits, and maybe if I take the right path in life, more great opportunities will come my way.

The hardest part of making this was getting my skin tone to the right shade, and getting my beads to not look like random bubbles. When you look at my portrait, I want you to imagine the hard work, dedication, time, and effort I put into it. While making this portrait I learned a lot of things. I learned that not everything has to be perfect and that mistakes are ok no matter what you're doing. I dedicate this portrait to my mom and my dad. 

In my portrait, I am wearing a blue shirt and one of my pink sweaters with my favorite jeans with extra pockets, ribbons, and butterflies on it. For the patterns when I did the portrait, I chose a blue design with dots for half of my upper body. For my lower body, I started with a dark purple background, then a pretty blue and purple design. For my pants I did a similar color to the jeans I was wearing that day and that design reminded me of my pants that I was wearing. I chose those colors because blue and purple are two of my favorite colors. I chose those patterns because they made me feel happy and excited, and they just looked pretty to me. In these “going out clothes” I would imagine myself at a mall or store with my family during winter, fall, or spring, but not summer because it would be way too hot for me. I want my portrait to look like me in real life, and for it to come out really nice! When people look at my portrait, I want them to feel happy and energetic even though the portrait is mostly just two colors.

Please notice that my portrait isn’t perfect, but that's ok because that's how I made it. What brought me joy in this project mostly was hot gluing the stuff on. I love hot glue a lot for some reason. What was most challenging for me when making my portrait was keeping the image on the canvas because the corners kept coming off even though I kept hot gluing it. I love how my portrait was when I was finished. I think it's really nice! Even though I didn't finish the color thing around the canvas, it's ok! The shading in the portrait came out well and the drawing actually looks like me. The only difference is the skin color!

Something about Gio Swaby’s portraits that inspired me a lot is how well she makes the art and the way she leaves the strings on in her portraits. I would like to show my mom all of my art even with the imperfections too! If I were to give my portrait to someone it would be my parents because I love to show my artwork to my parents and I think they would like the portrait. I can’t just choose one of my family members. I want to show ALL of my family members because I don't want them to feel left out or anything. I just genuinely want to show them all.

The reason I chose this pose was because at home, I was trying out poses and my dad was supposed to choose a pose he liked for me, but then he fell asleep. I saw his sleeping position and thought it was cool. Therefore, I took that as inspiration for my pose!  When you look at my portrait, I want you to imagine a hard-working father of four just resting from a long day at work whose daughter looks just like him. The reason I selected this outfit was because I felt like my dad would look amazing in this outfit. In my portrait I am wearing a red shirt and dark blue cargo jeans. I love these colors because these are my dad’s favorite colors, and these colors represent my national flag Haiti. I dedicate this portrait to my dad with gratitude for giving me inspiration.

In these clothes I imagine myself going to tropical Haiti and sitting down with my legs crossed on a low-back beach chair sipping Tampico. Something new I learned about Gio Swaby is that she has tried Haitian food. That made me feel phenomenal knowing that she tried a Caribbean cultural dish but from my part of the Caribbean. It brought me joy to meet Gio Swaby. What also brought me joy was starting my portrait because it was new, fun, and interesting. Come closer and notice the little flower from my mistake with the hot glue gun. I got mad but remembered that Gio Swaby is known for celebrating mistakes as part of making art.

In my portrait, I am wearing a blue shirt and blue jeans, and I picked a pose that will stand out. In these “going out clothes,” I imagine myself at my auntie’s house. She loves me so much and gives me all her love, and she always tells me to never be in a rush to grow up. What brought me joy doing this was gluing accessories to my art to make me look like I'm breathing aura. The greatest challenge I had working on this portrait was hot gluing on my beads to make me look good, and there was always a 100% chance that I would get burned, and it hurt very bad, and since most of them were hard it was my finger burning every time.

I love the colors because it's like looking into a whole aurora event with colors like the rainbow. When you look at my portrait, I want you to hear creativity, work, love, and dedication. Come closer to notice how hard it was to make sure the sketch was perfect and the hot glue didn't show as much, and so much sweat was put into my canvas. It's like literally cooking with my heart, and it's so crazy to think back on how I did all that work. My portrait is a love letter to my sister. Her Step Into Art portrait got put in a special exhibit, and it powered me to do all this to my canvas showing my creativity.

In these “going out clothes,” I imagine myself at my grandma's house. The reason why is because she really likes when I wear basic but fashionable clothes. I predict she likes these types of clothes on me because they remind her of her childhood. When she was young, she was wearing these types of clothes and now that she sees me in these types of clothes she used to wear, she feels like I'm her childhood self. On my grandma's birthday, October 9th, I matched clothes with her. The colors I chose to represent myself were white and blue. They remind me of my childhood and my grandma's childhood like I just talked about. I used to wear lots of blue, since my favorite color was blue, and lots of white because I was always matching with my mom.

An artist who inspired me is Gio Swaby. I know she worked really hard on her drawings/skills and more, and I know it took her a long time to successfully do her drawings nicely. I know even though she makes mistakes she can embrace it. Gio Swaby's favorite part of making her portraits was the process of connection and fostering a sense of love, joy and representation for black women and young girls. My favorite part when I was creating my portrait was painting the background with my favorite color which is blue. If my portrait was a love letter it would be to my grandma who gave me this fashion idea to put in my portrait when I didn't have any.

What brought me joy in doing my portrait was learning how to do stuff I couldn't do and knowing even though I make mistakes, I can still embrace them. Recently I was on a Zoom call with Gio Swaby and it was a fun experience. She talked about how everything doesn't always have to be perfect, like if you mess up in a drawing you can fix it and always embrace it. The moral of this portrait is that it is okay to mess up in drawings, but you can always embrace your mistakes and fix them. 

My portrait means more to me than what you see. People might look at it and not think much of it, but it makes me think about the long journey and the people which are my family, my friends, and my teacher. I kept messing up and had to restart but I kept going. One time I accidentally hot glued my picture sideways and had to restart, so that's why you should keep going. But when I look back at the journey, it was worth it because even though I made a lot of mistakes and things, I look back at it and think about the good memories. I also love my portrait because of the support that helped me keep going.

My art expresses me because it’s pink and pink was my favorite color throughout my whole childhood. I grew up with the color pink and had fun memories with it. Like one time when I was 4 years old, I had paint all over myself and it was silly and funny, the paint was on my face, hands, and legs. That was a really fun memory for me. Pink just makes me feel like me, and reminds me of all the fun memories I had.

So I don't just like my portrait because of how it looks, but also because of what it means to me about all the things I just said. It represents what I like. That's why my portrait is the way it is. It means more to me than you see. 

It was so much fun creating my piece. I think my favorite accessory was my bow. I wear it so much to so many places. This bow has been with me everywhere. One of my favorite moments with this bow is going to church. It was a bright summer day and my mom took me to Panera after. Despite the sweet moments, the process of making my art piece was still difficult. The hardest part for me was the hands. They were in front of my shirt, so it was hard to cut the shirt to fit them, but I think the struggle made everything more enjoyable.
                                                                                   
With the clothes I was wearing to take the photo, I think I would go to a supermarket in them. The outfit was simple and basic. But I still liked it. I could imagine myself watching my mom push the shopping cart around and the wheels scraping against the hard floor. But to the topic of my art piece. Gio Swaby's art is absolutely beautiful. My favorite part about her art that inspired me is leaving some things imperfect. It made my piece feel more alive. It made it feel human. All these things and all of my experience form my art piece.

In my Step Into Art portrait, I chose to wear a shirt and baggy jeans because that was what made me most comfortable, and I didn’t want to wear something that would make it seem like I'm trying too hard when this portrait is about being yourself. To me, baggy clothes are so comfy and cute. If I was to wear something that would be fancy, that would have meant I'm trying to impress somebody when the only person I'm trying to impress is myself. My earrings are something that I really darkened to emphasize the weight that they carry for me. My parents got them for me when they felt I was really growing up, and I was surprised. Though it hurt to have them pierced, I was still very proud of them. The colors I chose for my clothes have a meaning and most of them are my memories. The green shirt represents the first time me and my dad and brother went on a walk in Franklin Park Zoo. It was the first time me and my dad have ever done anything together. We didn’t actually do anything but just take a walk through the park and take photos and it was just really fun. The blue pants were because I genuinely like blue, and it reminds me of my thoughts when I thought about how the clouds would taste.

The skin was really hard for me to get a specific skin tone because of undertones and a mix between white and brown, but it was also really fun to mix the chalk together to get it. I am really proud of what I was able to do with my portrait as well as my clothes. The clothes kept messing up and slipping off which kept annoying me but I also really liked cutting out the pieces and making some changes in my clothes to make it the way I wanted it to look. Gio Swaby's portraits had inspired me to let things be imperfect and basically be human. She doesn't finish her portraits, or the sewings go out of the lines, and that’s on purpose. Gio Swaby's inspiration was having someone who sewed a lot, and that made me really happy to know that someone else also had inspiration from someone really artsy. My stepmom is really artsy and that inspired me a lot to want to try to be like her.

I dedicate this portrait to my Dad, stepmom and art teacher. 

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