In senior Piper Roman’s blend of digital and traditional art, her friends become her muses. Surrounded by brightly colored cutouts and monochrome scenery, their portraits symbolize Roman’s recurring theme of how friendships define one as an individual.

Q: What medium of art do you work with?

A: As an artist, my main medium is digital art. I work with a tablet and a drawing tablet, but recently, I’ve been including my digital art portraits with traditional mediums. So far, paint is my favorite, but I’m also getting into embroidery and other things.

Q: How long have you been doing digital art?

A: I’ve been an artist my whole life. I’ve been doing digital art for three or four years now and my digital portraits for a year and a half.

Q: What art shows have you entered your pieces into so far?

A: My largest art show yet that I placed in was for the One Bethany office building, obviously on East Bethany. They required large pieces of art, so I made four 2×2-foot boards, each composed of portraits and painted shapes. That was when I started making portraits and combining them with a traditional medium. It was my second painting ever, so that was where I started painting.

Q: Who do you usually paint portraits of?

A: My portraits are normally of my friends because part of my IB theme is that my friends represent me. I always choose someone I think accurately represents the topic that I’m planning on painting and draw a portrait of them.

Q: What other themes do you like to explore in your work?

A: My work is mostly about emotions and such; that’s what I convey through the portraits and other stuff that I paint. I do a lot of work in color and different mediums because different mediums convey different emotions and appeals, and I try to figure out what medium conveys my emotions best and use that. I dabble.

Q: What goals do you have for your art in the future?

A: There’s a big show coming up this December or February that I’m hoping to enter my whole portfolio in. It’s mostly shows about my portfolio because I think my portfolio does better together than it does apart, so that’s my main plan. Plus, I have the IB show this spring, so that’s going to be really cool.