Luke Roth “Eye Study”

14.5in x 11in, Graphite, 2020

The initial idea just kinda came from my baseline sketch. I drew a simplistic eye sketch and liked it, but wanted to make it far more realistic/complex. This piece was basically just an expansion of my previous sketch, and I wanted to do it because I've always liked trying to draw eyes in realism. To start, I just did a pretty rough gesture sketch on the paper. Then I erased most of it, leaving only an extremely light outline. From here I kinda just divided the paper into different sections and shaded them in accordingly. This shading process just repeated until I was finally done, then I touched it up at the end a bit. What does the artwork mean? What do you want your audience to think about? Is there any symbolic imagery in the work? Although there isn't any direct symbolism I was going for, eyes alone can represent a lot. For starters, one's eyes can reveal almost exactly what they’re thinking or how they're feeling. This relates to my drawing because when someone looks at it, I’d like for them to look into their own eyes, and perhaps how they reflect themselves to everyone around them. The hardest part of this for me was putting in the time for it. Before this, I had never really spent more than half a week on anything, and this one took around two or three weeks. Aside from this, nothing was really too overwhelmingly difficult or challenging. If i were to start over, I’d put more effort into getting cleaner gradients and shading. This piece is meant to be realistic. It represents my personal style of drawing because it's pretty clean and seamless. Normally, I gesture sketch, which in a way can also be seen as seamless and clean. This realistic attempt at art kinda puts this concept into a completely different light, but can still be described the same way.

Luke Roth "Jarad Higgins"

18in x 24in, Pen/Mixed Media, 2020

Before starting this drawing I wanted to create a portrait depicting some celebrity that has left some kinda imprint on me. Although many came to mind, famous rapper “Juice Wrld” fit the criteria the best. I find his music to be incredibly meaningful, and I think he was one of the more grounded and talented rappers during his time. That being said, his career and what he stood for led me to want to draw him for this project. This piece was a pain to make. I started by tracing an image of Juice with an extremely light pencil. I spent a few days alone perfecting this sketch and just making sure I had all the proportions right. After this, I put pen to paper and began hatching away at the piece. This took up most of the time, however I still did a little more with this work. I proceeded to cut the entire thing out and put it onto a piece of paper with different pieces of newspaper in the background. After this, I simply flattened the piece and I was all done. Unlike my first piece, this drawing can be more directly interpreted by an audience. Assuming you’ve listened to Juice’s music, you’d know he struggled with addiction, as well as several other mental disorders. In my case, he was one of the first people I had ever seen who could turn something so bad into a promising career that benefited millions. That being said, this drawing is made to show how Juice died way too young, and that his music was truly one of a kind. Although it doesn't necessarily do him justice, it’s made to bring some attention to someone I genuinely think was one of a kind in numerous ways. For me, the hardest parts of this drawing were using the pen, and incorporating the newspaper. Prior to this drawing, I had very little experience drawing with a pen. It’s a more permanent and bold approach to drawing, as opposed to using traditional graphite. However, after a few hours of working with it I began to grow quicker and more confident with this technique as a whole. I also struggled a little trying to smoothly incorporate the newspaper into the background of the piece. In the end, I wasn't really too happy with the overall result of the background. That being said, I will be sure to glue in the background before the cutout in the future. It’s made to be a realistic styled drawing. That being said, I made it my own in a couple different ways. Firstly, I used a pen and added newspapers depicting Juice’s death to the background of the work. I also proceeded to gesturally work with the pen in order to create an almost sketchy look up close. When you look away, the pen begins to blend a bit more. This blending and change in realism based on perspective is something I really do like about this drawing.

Luke Roth "JR1"

18in x 20in, Colored Pencil, 2020

Initially, I got the idea for this drawing through one of my sketches that I had made at the beginning of the semester. It was a hatched, flattened out version of what this project actually turned out to be. On top of that, I needed to do something in color, so I thought that shoes wouldn't be too challenging, but at the same time relatively difficult for me. That all being said, the actual inspiration of this piece simply came from a sketch I had done a while back. To do this piece, I started with a grid as I usually do. Did this in order to insure that the actual proportions were going to be correct. After this, I lightly went over everything in pencil and defined my lines a little bit more. From here, I went in with large blobs of each color I was going to need. I kinda just vaguely filled areas in then refined them until I was happy with it. After I had a general idea of what the piece was gonna look like, I finished up with the laces, and added tiny little touches in areas that need to be touched up a bit. In terms of the actual symbolism found in this piece, there is not much. It is not an abstracted or surreal drawing, but rather a still life. Although it wasn't executed perfectly, all I really wanted to do was capture these shoes with solid realism. That being said, the Jordan Retro One is a very timeless shoe. I want people to look at it and consider whatever the shoe could mean to them. This would be an interesting way to look at this drawing, and would differentiate based on whoever was looking. When it came to the challenges I faced throughout this drawing, one of which was the usage of colored pencils. I had never seriously used colored pencils prior to this piece. In my opinion however, I believe it actually turned out to be pretty decent. If I were to go back and re-do this piece, I would simply take some more time. I kinda rushed through this piece, and it shows in a couple spots. When looking at this drawing, it is pretty obvious that it is meant to be realistic. In terms of how my artistic voice relates to it, it really doesn't. Usually when I draw, I stick to graphite, hatched drawings. I prefer to work in balck and white, and usually draw extremely loosely or gesturally. This piece directly contradicts this, given that it is pretty realistic with no evidence of hatching or sketch lines.

Luke Roth "Gestural Study"

18in x 24in, Graphite, 2020

I’m not entirely sure why I even decided to do this project to be completely honest. I had some time and just figured I’d do something I was comfortable with. That being said, I decided to draw a fish in a very sketchy, hatchy style; something more typical to myself. The idea itself came from a sketch I had made a couple weeks prior to starting this project. I simply thought it was kinda neat and wanted to make it a little bigger and more detailed. To actually do this drawing, I started by making a grid like I usually do. I took the initial sketch and projected it by 3x, then proceeded to transfer it onto a grittier, larger piece of paper. From there, I defined the lines and hatched in the areas that were gonna get the darkest and most distinct values. After that, I added in the medium values, and also added the small details to the fish. In the darker areas, I shaded it in as I normally would, but in the medium and light areas, the shading is distinctly hatched. After I had a pretty solid idea of where each value was going to go, I used a blending stump to make some areas very smooth, but keep others rough and hatched. This created a kinda neat contrast when the values went from dark to light. Presented this drawing was made almost entirely for fun, it doesn't really have any serious significance to the viewer. In my case, the reference photo was a picture I had taken a while ago while fishing with a couple friends. This causes me to think of something when I see this drawing, but that doesn't apply to everyone else. In short, unless anyone has any significant memories surrounding a bass, I don't really know how people would interpret this piece. In terms of the challenges I faced while making this piece, they were all pretty insignificant. The whole idea behind this drawing was to make something that was in my stereotypical comfort zone, and execute it very well. Because of this, each challenge I faced was pretty easy to work with, and didn't really factor into the overall quality of this piece. The only real issue I had with the drawing was that I was using very soft graphite, meaning the paper smudged extremely easily. I tried to continuously erase this in the beginning, but ended up just giving up. In the end, I actually kinda like the way the smudges contribute to the final piece. Unlike some of my other projects, this drawing is very representative of my artistic voice. If you took a look at my sketchbook, this entire piece could fit right in. Although it is a bit bigger and rendered in more detail, it still keeps a very sketchy and gestural look to it. There are gestural lines that I didn't erase that also contribute to this. For this reason, I actually quite like this drawing. It's pretty much just an expansion of what I usually do in my free time, and enjoy accordingly.