Painting 2

(IDEA) The idea is that the painting will be a type of spreading awareness. It evolved from videos on tiktok of people making their own versions of it with different meanings, so I made my own reference and painted my own.

(PROCESS) I started with the background first, painting the canvas a very light green for the sky area. Then I moved on to a slightly darker, more vibrant green for the first layer of trees before moving on to another slightly darker green for the next layer of trees, and the next. The last layer of trees being the very dark, almost black trees in the front row. After I finished the trees, I moved on to the deer. I painted the deer white first as a base, then I mixed a brown color and painted in the white silhouette, going back with a darker color for certain areas of shading and a black for the shading of the belly area and the nose. I also used white again to add highlights to the deer. The way I painted the deer makes it look almost animated, in a way. Kind of a between of looking 2D and 3D to our eyes. I finished it by adding the crosshair with a bright red, making sure it stands out from the background and the brown color of the deer's fur. 

(SYMBOLISM & ICONOGRAPHY) My intention was to make something heavy in meaning, but mostly simple in look, and I think I achieved that. The deer represents innocence, or innocents, and the crosshair over the deers eye represents the loss of that innocence or the murder of innocents. People have different meanings when they make their own versions, but it is most often representing things like spreading awareness for sexual assault and other abusive situations.

(ARTISTIC GROWTH) The most difficult thing for me when painting this was trying to let myself make mistakes and not make everything perfect. I thought if the painting was too perfect it wouldn't fit well with it's meaning, so I tried my best to let my lines be wonky sometimes. Being a perfectionist, that was quite difficult for me. But I took a few breaths and reminded myself things are allowed to have imperfections and impurities before continuing to paint. If I were to start over, I don't know what I would change to be totally honest. It turned out exactly how I wanted it to, and I love it.

(VISUAL VOICE) The style of the painting is surrealism, and I think it's unique to my personal style just with the way it looks. I often start paintings with very stiff ideas that I'm usually unsure about where to go next and then I relax and lean into the idea as I go. I think that shows when you look at things like the trees, how the first couple layers are more spiky looking and sharp, but as you look down the rows they get more rounded, loose, and less "forced" looking.