Artists Take Risks
Did you pick a material or technique that was new or different over something that was familiar? Did you try something that you weren't sure about as part of this project?
I have begun my second artwork of the school year for art II. The theme for this project is INTERIOR / EXTERIOR and I chose to incorporate an eye as the exterior in my piece and being that eyes are supposedly the windows to the soul, the iris will represent the interior. My beginning sketches were in pencil and then I was reacquainted with oil pastel through a workshop in class from another student. I first used oil pastels two years ago in another art class for a single project. I had first intended for my artwork to be completely composed in pencil, but chose the pastels over the classic. I started with the colored oil pastels using small, sparse strokes for grass. While using my red pastel for the top of my mushroom tree, I noticed my marks had a lot of white gradient, extremely similar to the way crayons draw, and didn't completely enjoy the way it looked. It looked fine, but not exactly what I wanted so I decided to try using white on the red. I was wary at first about using the white pastel on the red because I was concerned about it looking pink and smearing into the surrounding brown and orange. It turned out too light so I stopped before coloring over the whole top. Next, I colored hard over the entirety of the mushroom, making the red look very thick and waxy. This effect was exactly what I wanted.
Artists Reflect
When did you step back and analyze your work during this project? Did you consider how idea would work before you tried them?
While making the initial sketch of my interior/exterior artwork, I started off with a completely different iris design. The original idea was two paper cut men holding hands around the iris. Also their legs were turned and crossing each other in a fashion I rather enjoyed. My current idea, I decided to make a fantasy land that is imagined by the eye's owner. One of the aspects inside of the iris were pizza clouds, but while looking the artwork as a whole over I thought they looked cramped and disproportional. Once the pizza clouds were removed, the world looked more spread out and serene in a sort of 'country pastor' kind of way.