Adrian Assmus

Process

My process has changed a lot depending on what I’m working on. For more physical things such as sculpting, I just tended to wing it working on it with no real outline, and then with drawings, I would need an outline or else I couldn’t draw what I wanted. For this show’s pieces, I swapped that around using an outline for my stuffed animals and no outline for my drawn pieces. Because of this, I noticed that during my process of drawing, my compositions have started to improve. I no longer draw either really big or really small and leave white space everywhere but have now started to have a combination of big and small in one drawing and there is little to no white space. I also started to sketch directly with pen or markers and no longer count on pencils and being able to erase my drawings all the time to further get rid of the outlining in my process.

My piece is a mural of a giant lion. It is bigger than a life-sized lion being about 93 inches long and 64 inches high. It is an acrylic painting. This piece focuses on my process as an artist and how this piece has developed as I looked more into lions, including what they have represented throughout art history. Lions are used in art as a symbol of strength and power being one of the biggest land mammals. Through my piece, I want to convey the power that they hold but also sympathy. In my piece, there is a golden ring or halo around the lion’s head that could imply the death of the lion. Through that subtle detail and the sympathetic look on the lion’s face, I want to draw sympathy from other people.

Progress

Progress to me means moving forward. How I see progress is that as long as you are moving forward you are making progress. You don't have to show improvement because sometimes you get worse at things before you get better. My stretching practice is an example of my progress. When it comes to both my observational skills and technique, after a while of doing animal studies, I have looked back at my old drawings and I see the improvement.