Kristina • 16 • Dublin

Last year, during Transition Year, I created a poster titled "It’s Not Love If It Hurts," which focused on the emotional pain of unhealthy relationships during my social education class. This project stayed with me as it explored a powerful message about love, vulnerability, and emotional hurt. When I found out about this competition, I felt inspired to revisit that design but add a new twist to the design. While working on this project, I found fresh inspiration from Taylor Swift’s lyrics, specifically the line, "I can do it with a broken heart” while I was drawing and listening to the music, The lyric made me reflect on how even the hardest times and nights we always have ourselves to get back up and retry again even in our darkest moments. It inspired me to expand on my original idea by not only highlighting the pain of unhealthy love but also portraying the strength that can come from surviving it hence why the sketch is trying to sew the heart back up. For my drawing I used HB pencils and colouring pencils I had laying around. I decided to add the affect of blood flowing through the hands to add to that effect of pain and vunrability to the piece. Overall I am very happy with my project.