Responding to NYC

Purpose:

Create a work of art that is a personal response to the NYC field trip.

Reflection on Work:

My biggest challenge on this piece was definitely trying to get each detail of the faces while working so small. I prefer to draw my portraits really large so I can get each detail and element of the face, but with these portraits I had to simplify which I often struggle with in any drawing not just portraits. I believe I overcame this struggle rather well and I took my time to work through the small details to my liking. I feel as though the strongest element of this piece are the details within each drawing. I allowed myself to push past the portraits and focus on the background and objects surrounding the subjects.

My inspiration for this work came from my love of portraits and the human face. I wanted to be able to show and share my experience of New York with the viewer and because I was constantly surrounded my friends and strangers I thought this was a perfect way to tell my experiences of New York. By drawing from photographs I wanted to tell the story of our trip through snapshots of what we did. Instead of showing one event or person, I wanted to show many events and all the different things we did. I believe I was able to show the viewer the snapshots with each drawing and explain what we did as a group through the drawings as well.

Throughout my drawing I used balance to organize and compose each of the drawings and allow them to work together to create the whole piece. I did this by balancing the amount of dark values and light values to create contrasting areas. I also used rhythm in each of my drawings to create unity within the whole piece. To do this I kept to a specific style and consistent mark making in all six of the drawings.